You set out to play Jewish Ethiopia, so you are already playing suboptimally.
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I like mission trees actually. It seems like in the minority in this forum, but still I like them.
There are a pletora of reasons why:
- An argument often said is that it hampers introduction of new mechanics, yet it's often the mission trees themselves that introduce new mechanics, so I don't really agree with this argument.
- As long as there are plenty of mission trees (which there are), they increase the amount of ways you can play the game, not reduce it. As an example: Take two next door OPM neighbours inside the HRE. How would nation 1 be vastly different than nation 2 as well as play differently without mission trees? I guess you can differentiate where one is a Monarchy and one is theocracy or republic, but how many times can you do that? And what about when you've played theocracy for a 1000 times already on different parts of the globe. How would it be different? Add mission trees to the mix and they can be vastly different. One focusing on decentralizing the HRE and introducing some mechanics to make it actually worth the effort and one on spreading it's dynasty on all thrones in Europe (for example) and suddenly you have 2 20 hour long vastly different new campaigns, even though they're just two neighbours in the same culture group, same religion, same mechanics and same interactions and events.
- A mission tree can make a nation OP, but nowadays most nations have a mission tree. Can it be considered OP if everyone has it? I also argue that the game hasn't become easier through time. In fact, starting as a minor these days is harder than ever. Can't count the amount of times I've seen people complain about Ardabil not being possible anymore.
- You can choose to ignore mission trees. Sure, the argument is then that the AI doesn't ignore it, yet how many times have you seen an AI complete its mission tree?
- They can be used to tell a story. Looking at Anbennar, playing through your mission tree is living and experience the history of your nation. It's one of the main ways of how the story of the world is told and it works beautifully well. Rewards are often not shown in the mission trees as well, but through events, especially final rewards. This encourages you to try out different nations. Sucks if you don't like the final reward, true, but is that really why you're playing the game? For that final reward of a mission tree? I'm not.
- They make achievement runs more fun. Almost all achievements I have are either super short, or done with nations that have a decent mission tree. If it's neither: ugh. No, I'm not doing 'The Fezzan Corridors'. Not until they get a mission tree.
- In my 4000+ hours of playing this game, I've yet to run out of mission trees that I want to try or retry. So I don't really see the argument of reducing replayability. For me, they increase it, because I usually have a goal in a campaign and then search out a mission tree that enhances that goal. It could be to create Space Marines (as in the Marine regiment), that can be done with Norway and picking specific ideasets (where else will you get the joy of trying out Maritime ideas). Want to stack tolerance of the true faith so that even at 300+ overextension you don't have positive unrest? How about Ethiopia's mission tree and monuments + ideagroups and policies? Hussite HRE? -> Bohemia, or a neighbour of Bohemia. Stacking improve relations and aggressive expansion reduction? Why not form Italy as Florence with permanent 100 prestige?
There are a pletora of reasons why:
- An argument often said is that it hampers introduction of new mechanics, yet it's often the mission trees themselves that introduce new mechanics, so I don't really agree with this argument.
- As long as there are plenty of mission trees (which there are), they increase the amount of ways you can play the game, not reduce it. As an example: Take two next door OPM neighbours inside the HRE. How would nation 1 be vastly different than nation 2 as well as play differently without mission trees? I guess you can differentiate where one is a Monarchy and one is theocracy or republic, but how many times can you do that? And what about when you've played theocracy for a 1000 times already on different parts of the globe. How would it be different? Add mission trees to the mix and they can be vastly different. One focusing on decentralizing the HRE and introducing some mechanics to make it actually worth the effort and one on spreading it's dynasty on all thrones in Europe (for example) and suddenly you have 2 20 hour long vastly different new campaigns, even though they're just two neighbours in the same culture group, same religion, same mechanics and same interactions and events.
- A mission tree can make a nation OP, but nowadays most nations have a mission tree. Can it be considered OP if everyone has it? I also argue that the game hasn't become easier through time. In fact, starting as a minor these days is harder than ever. Can't count the amount of times I've seen people complain about Ardabil not being possible anymore.
- You can choose to ignore mission trees. Sure, the argument is then that the AI doesn't ignore it, yet how many times have you seen an AI complete its mission tree?
- They can be used to tell a story. Looking at Anbennar, playing through your mission tree is living and experience the history of your nation. It's one of the main ways of how the story of the world is told and it works beautifully well. Rewards are often not shown in the mission trees as well, but through events, especially final rewards. This encourages you to try out different nations. Sucks if you don't like the final reward, true, but is that really why you're playing the game? For that final reward of a mission tree? I'm not.
- They make achievement runs more fun. Almost all achievements I have are either super short, or done with nations that have a decent mission tree. If it's neither: ugh. No, I'm not doing 'The Fezzan Corridors'. Not until they get a mission tree.
- In my 4000+ hours of playing this game, I've yet to run out of mission trees that I want to try or retry. So I don't really see the argument of reducing replayability. For me, they increase it, because I usually have a goal in a campaign and then search out a mission tree that enhances that goal. It could be to create Space Marines (as in the Marine regiment), that can be done with Norway and picking specific ideasets (where else will you get the joy of trying out Maritime ideas). Want to stack tolerance of the true faith so that even at 300+ overextension you don't have positive unrest? How about Ethiopia's mission tree and monuments + ideagroups and policies? Hussite HRE? -> Bohemia, or a neighbour of Bohemia. Stacking improve relations and aggressive expansion reduction? Why not form Italy as Florence with permanent 100 prestige?
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Mission trees are like national ideas: You can ignore them, but if your country has its own mission tree, ignoring it is almost always a terrible plan.
Which reminds me that I should finish and upload my mod that gives everyone the generic NIs and the generic mission trees. (First I need to sort out any disasters etc. that rely on NIs or national missions.)
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Off the top of my head, if you’re attempting the achievement Australia-Hungray, you’ll get introduced to the new Aborigine tribes, their NI’s, and the various reworked tribal mechanics. From those tribe’s mission trees you’ll also get introduced to their new faith mechanics.
Or perhaps Austria and AEIOU, messing around with HRE and Reformation mechanics? Most people seem to either avoid that area entirely or intentionally try to break them. But if you try to work *with* them, it can make for an interesting game.
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Half of Austria's missions getting locked up if you try to do anything other than "be the Emperor"
is not something i celebrate.
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No, he didn't ask "how to modernize the army". What he asked was where in the mission-tree does it state that completing mission XYZ will result in changing to western tech units?
I very much agree with OP, that I strongly dislike having a bunch of missions or decisions that just say "Triggers the ABC event" and then in order to go and find out what that actually means you have to follow a chain of 10+ event descriptions in the wiki. It'd be okay if those events were all minor "gain 20 prestige" stuff, but some of them can completely change the direction of a playthrough.
In general I like mission trees, but those missions that have game-changing stuff hidden behind mysterious event descriptions need to be done better.
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I unified the Empire for the first time in 2014. (As France!)
Nothing I've read about the changes to HRE gameplay makes me believe it's any less annoying now than it was then.
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- An option is overpowered if, when presented as a choice, it will always be chosen by members of a group.
- An option is balanced if, when presented as a choice, it will be chosen sometimes, due to its ability to fulfil requirements.
- An option is underpowered if, when presented as a choice, it will always be ignored by the group.
What youre describing (every nation gets an extensive mission tree that ultimately culminates in +5 disc, +5 admin efficiency, +25 permanent power projection, +gov cap, etc until end of game) flattens the experience into a choice that any player is going to pick every time. That isnt good and immersive game design, its boring.
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Not only do you have to be the emperor you have to: stay catholic, win the league war even if it would be disadvantageous to do so, and centralize the HRE.
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I guess we can go into a semantics discussion as in what is a mechanic, but I mean stuff like allowing a nation to get 3 tax dev with a single click (Japanese missions), or allowing admirals to give army professionalism, or unlocking unique estates, estate mechanics, government reforms, ...
In that sence, every modifier is overpowered when stacked. That is, however, a plus to this game, not a detriment.
And average amount of players seems to agree, since that's the direction the devs have taken and the amount of players now is more than 5 years ago.
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The most obvious way of differentiating nations by geography. How many provinces do you start with? What's their terrain type? How much Dev. do you have? Do you start with a CoT? How good is your starting trade node?
HRE is a very good example of a place where playing an OPM in every direction can give you a different experience. To the north you have easy access to the sea, to the east you have to worry about PLC, to the south you can expand into Italy thus not caring about HRE penalties, and to the west you have France and Burgundy to worry about.
Other options are: do you start as a free city? Are there any free cities around you to block expansion? Are you close to any big aggressive tag or surrounded by small tags?
In this is all just in Europe. Playing an OPM in the New World (even with all unique mechanics off) will give you a vastly different game then a HRE OPM. Or play in India if you want fast expansion going up against a few strong tags, or in the middle east if you want a mil challenge.
Of course, not every single nation on the map will play uniquely without mission trees. But still, mission trees do not offer you anything more unique than your starting condition already do.
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It's funny you should mention Castile, a tag which can easily end up being very difficult the first time you play it if you don't go to the wiki to read up on the Castilian civil war first.
I generally agree with you though, mission trees are terrible for the game.
My first thought when seeing something called "... reform" is to check the government reforms, but that's usually not it either
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The problem here is that then people come along and say that "you don't have to choose the option of playing mission trees" is bad design. Guilty in either case. It's not a problem of mission trees, it's problematic players.
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I have a small problem with your post, in that you start it with "you like mission trees" but I feel like you end up defending the concept, and individual small ways it was implemented, rather than the system in the game as we have it overall.
You are absolutely right that some form of missions wouldn't be bad. I like your example with HRE minors. I quite enjoyed doing the mission tree for Lubeck, as it didn't try to too much wild stuff, it didn't go too far into the game(it mostly covered your first 50-100 years) and didn't gave you overly op bonuses (still too strong for my liking).
This is a minority of mission trees in this game at this point.
The challenge of playing most nations, especially ones reworked in more recent patches, has been almost completely negated by what you are now provided with MTs.
Poland, for instance, was already a country with one of the highest military potentials even before their first update back in 1.27. The 1.33 mission tree made them so hilariously broken, Poland now feels like an anime protagonist surrounded by measly tertiary characters.
Mutapa used to be a tougher-ish start, given its placement in Africa, but now hey you get a mission that makes you get dev for building buildings.. which makes you earn more money for more buildings for more dev. Sure, it's "cool" I guess? but it's also incredibly brainless.
It adds to the game at the expense of turning other parts of the game irrelevant.
Oh cool, I now have magical wizard funi horsies that can cast avada kedavra on their enemies, but now the entirety of warfare & combat boils down to just moving an army on top of your opponent's army without thinking.
I have a cool mechanic that makes me stronger by building buildings.. but now I don't need to worry about not being able to afford things, because that mechanic gives you one of the most insane snowballs possible in this game.
This is more important than I feel you might realize. The AI doesn't complete its mission trees because it straight up doesn't know how to.
Mission trees are nearly exclusively a player-only mechanic. Almost anything that you get through a mission tree can be considered an unfair advantage over other participants in the game, that being AI for most players.
It is wild to me that we're seemingly fine with the player countries being made massively stronger compared to AI in EU4, when it's supposed to be a strategy game.
It's like we played chess, except I get a 3rd row of pieces consisting solely of queens. Enjoy. (yes, I get that EU4 shouldn't be fully symmetrical, no it doesn't mean that EU4 should turn into an arcade game).
Moreover, sure, I can agree mission trees can be just skipped. Let's ignore just how not great it feels to do that.
Doing so, would mean that the game for me has remained functionally nearly unchanged in 2 years, and in some aspects got even worse.
As you also indirectly pointed out, almost every single "cool" thing we've been getting is locked behind mission trees.
If you really push it, I can agree that complaining about MTs existence is off, but in this case I think it's fair to complain that better things don't exist in their place.
You are right that mission trees added come cool-ish mechanics, which in turn slightly alter the tired gameplay loop
but... why do they have to be locked behind following a railroaded storyline written by someone else, and why can only I get them, and not all the other participants in the game - like AI?
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Again there is one part of the mission tree that mentions the army. This is the mission that will give you western units. Now you can argue that it doesn't say it gives western units which is what I assume you are referring to. If you already know that you will get better units to I assume reading a dev diary (where I am pretty sure its mentioned) or watching a guide looking at the missions will tell you that this is the only possible path.
I see this as much better than having random events or decisions tied to secret invisible triggers or slider positions (this one is from EU3) because now I actually have the chance of seeing what I can get throughout the game. Instead of having to read up on the wiki I can look at the mission tree to check out what events or goverment reforms (or whatever else) I might get and the description will give me an idea what comes out. Then I can look it up if I need a 100 detailed answer.
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Yeah, I'm nowhere near as adamantly against mission trees as some people here, nor do I agree entirely with content or tone of their comments. But this here is exactly what he's talking about when he mentions homework.
It's infuriating even to me how easily you are dismissing it. I can't imagine how they must feel. "just watch a guide bro", that's exactly what he does not want to be forced to do.
Yes, the "event insight" they have been adding is definitely a step in the right direction, but that doesn't mean it provides all information that it should in-game. If saying it will "reform the army and provide great military advantage" is descriptive enough for you, that's great. But it's clear the issue here is people want a more solid explanation of what exactly that reform will give you.
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