The game is starting to feel more like "use the mission tree"

[Banedon Runestar]

Possibly but there are a lot of open areas for Portugal including Indonesia and Africa.

People complained about historical colonization because it wasn't random enough but Portugal does the same shit every game now, they just go to Caribbean and typically settle Hispaniola and the rest then onto Florida and Louisiana. None of that makes sense for Portugal.

If I recall my real-life history correctly, (and I may be mistaken) Spain was colonizing to find gold to pay off the debts they had built up fighting the Moors during the Reconquista and the rebuilding afterwards. Since the Spanish found the Maya, Aztec, and Inca quickly, they naturally focused on Central and South America.

Portugal was looking for a way to cut the middlemen (the Ottomans and Venice) out of the Silk/Spice Road. But I have no idea how you’d model that in-game for the AI or the player, without “railroading”. That was an intentional political/financial choice of the Portuguese, and the game mechanics being what they are, it’s not the optimal or intuitive choice.

 

[Volbound]

If I recall my real-life history correctly, (and I may be mistaken) Spain was colonizing to find gold to pay off the debts they had built up fighting the Moors during the Reconquista and the rebuilding afterwards. Since the Spanish found the Maya, Aztec, and Inca quickly, they naturally focused on Central and South America.

Portugal was looking for a way to cut the middlemen (the Ottomans and Venice) out of the Silk/Spice Road. But I have no idea how you’d model that in-game for the AI or the player, without “railroading”. That was an intentional political/financial choice of the Portuguese, and the game mechanics being what they are, it’s not the optimal or intuitive choice.

The issue is the way the East is setup as well. I think leaving a couple of blank (no civilization) provinces in India to help Europeans get there. The Portugal Mission tree opens the door to go East but AI never follows it.

Perhaps have a Historical Colonization option to give people, like myself, what we want.

Portugal took over trade in the East by early 1500s and controlled Gao, Malacca, and the Indian Ocean. That area was very wealthy and Portugal made bank. They said a Portuguese Carrick hit an island near England and the English stumbled upon it and found it had more valuables than 1/4 of the English treasurer which was incentive for England to start getting out and exploring.

For a time period about the Age of Exploration and Colonization, the Colonization mechanic in EU4 is not that great and not very historic.

It would be controversial but the early renditions with less natives and more historical colonization focused would be preferred by myself and perhaps other players.


Regarding Spanish comment, it was more about beating Portugal than debt. The New World was actually a sideshow for most people in Spain other than Isabella who gave in to Columbus and supported later expeditions. Conquistadors were really nothing but former veteran mercenaries that were out for gold. They were not supported by Spanish Government (at least not to a great extent). Cortez and Pizarro are actually some of the greatest conquerors in history and should be in the same breathe as Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Genghis Khan.

 

[zincpl]

It's something that is hard to model in the current game - basically the Spanish civil war had lead to a treaty which recognised Portugal's exclusive claim to anything south of the canaries. This is why Isabella considered going west rather than south. After the trip, Columbus returned via Lisbon and so his discoveries were claimed by Portugal which in turn lead to the treaty of Tordesillas almost immediately (in 1494) - at that point, Portugal had reached the cape, so both sides felt it was a win for them based on the info they had at the time. The treaty was pretty important because it kept the peace between the two rivals - who both wanted to exploit the new lands rather than get into a costly war - and determined the shape of iberian exploration and colonisation for the next centuries.


The game could add the treaty of Alcacovas to the end of the spanish civil war event if portugal joins - basically an exclusivity of exploration/colonisation of the west africa region. Likewise it could be a part of any peace deal between natiions with exploration. The treaty would boost coast-hugging explo range for the victor , drastically slow down exploration in ivory coast for the nation on the 'wrong' side of it. A european nation that is blocked from colonising because of this or no available colonies would get a boost their exploration range. When/If America is discovered, if there are any such treaties active, an event pops up in which it can be contested with a special naval war between the 2 nations but with no land to be taken, just annulation of the treaty and other cash stuff - or you can have the (real) Treaty of Tordesillas which would divide things along historical lines (or maybe a north-south version or other variants for fun) and only affect the nations involved.

With a bit of tweaking and balancing this could replace the OP portuguese explo bonuses and ahistoric ToT, and lead to historic colonisation by default, but also a couple of alternate pathways with player intervention where e.g. spain and portugal race around the cape and america is discovered only later on by the (now blocked) britsh or french or a different division of the world. It could work pretty well.

 

[Volbound]

It's something that is hard to model in the current game - basically the Spanish civil war had lead to a treaty which recognised Portugal's exclusive claim to anything south of the canaries. This is why Isabella considered going west rather than south. After the trip, Columbus returned via Lisbon and so his discoveries were claimed by Portugal which in turn lead to the treaty of Tordesillas almost immediately (in 1494) - at that point, Portugal had reached the cape, so both sides felt it was a win for them based on the info they had at the time. The treaty was pretty important because it kept the peace between the two rivals - who both wanted to exploit the new lands rather than get into a costly war - and determined the shape of iberian exploration and colonisation for the next centuries.


The game could add the treaty of Alcacovas to the end of the spanish civil war event if portugal joins - basically an exclusivity of exploration/colonisation of the west africa region. Likewise it could be a part of any peace deal between natiions with exploration. The treaty would boost coast-hugging explo range for the victor , drastically slow down exploration in ivory coast for the nation on the 'wrong' side of it. A european nation that is blocked from colonising because of this or no available colonies would get a boost their exploration range. When/If America is discovered, if there are any such treaties active, an event pops up in which it can be contested with a special naval war between the 2 nations but with no land to be taken, just annulation of the treaty and other cash stuff - or you can have the (real) Treaty of Tordesillas which would divide things along historical lines (or maybe a north-south version or other variants for fun) and only affect the nations involved.

With a bit of tweaking and balancing this could replace the OP portuguese explo bonuses and ahistoric ToT, and lead to historic colonisation by default, but also a couple of alternate pathways with player intervention where e.g. spain and portugal race around the cape and america is discovered only later on by the (now blocked) britsh or french or a different division of the world. It could work pretty well.

Players can deviate from history under any scenario so that is probably covered but I like some of your ideas.

Treaty of Tordesillas was a coupe for Spain (or Castile). I read a recent book about Isabella and have a concept of that era to a degree that I normally would not.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

I wish the devs would revisit old mission trees and government reforms to bring them up to par with the current ones, or address the power creep in the current ones. It seriously demotivates me to play tags that were designed a while ago knowing no matter how successful I am, some tags will be better at everything due to magic buffs. Perhaps make harder requirements for permanent modifiers of old trees but reward achieving the conditions. Also I think unique reforms like Prussian Monarchy or Mughal Diwan should be available to any tag under specific conditions.

 

[Tempscire]

One thing I do not like about mission trees is the strong link between flavor and power they often have.

The quality of the content in the latest versions has been quite a bit higher than in the previous versions and I understand that it is almost impossible to provide such content to all nations at once. The unfortunate thing here is that not only do countries have widely different flavor standards but also widely different balance standards.

And I think this could be avoidable. A lot of work in mission trees is design, research, localization, etc. I think it could be possible to keep the power of mission trees and other game features on par with each other without doing all the work at once. For example instead of revisiting old mission trees, one could at least adjust rewards to a certain degree.

A good example here are the missions "Monopolize East Africa"(Mutapa) and "The Future of Trade"(Venice). The requirements of both these missions are not that different from a difficulty perspective. But for one you get a strong trade modifier until the end of the game and for the other you get a negligible one for 15 years. These kind of power discrepancies can be found in a lot of mission trees.

Obviously not every country needs to have a mission tree of equal strength. But as soon as formable nations come into play this also starts to affect player choices to a significant degree. And if player choices are too unbalanced and straightforward a large part of the strategical element of the game gets lost.

It is also clear that power and flavor cannot be separated completely, as there needs to be some incentive to complete the missions.

But the incentive probably does not need to be as large as the recent mission trees make it out to be.

Consider my current Mutapa into Mughals run:

I do not see why a single mission (which is easy to complete) needs to give me more development than the entire world has in a normal run. Don't understand me wrong. I do like the creativity of the new mission rewards and I also think that the new modifiers added are great and allow for a lot of experimentation. But this is an example of a reward which warps core concepts of the game (development) to such a significant degree that there is just no other country which can even come close to Mutapa when it comes to gaining a lot of development.
It also, along with other things like the huge number of autonomy in territories modifiers, contributes to problems with older game mechanics. For example in this game I have 100 maximal sailors. Why? Due to coding limitations the max sailor variable is capped at some point over 1.3 million (This is some form of integer overflow). If you have too many sailors you will only get 5 sailors per month. This would not be a problem, if it were impossible to actually get that many sailors in the unmodded game. But in this run for example this is easily possible. I have been over the cap for decades.

This power discrepancy can also lead to deficits in believable storytelling, which seems to be one of the goals of at least recent EU4 design. For example why can pirates plundering weapons from the Venetian arsenal utilize these weapons better than the Venetians themselves?

Another balance concern is obviously the stacking of modifiers and I do think Endgame tags are probably not the best answer to this. They are very inconsistent, as a lot of very strong combinations are still allowed, while some weaker ones are simply impossible. While one can definitely see that this is taken into account when looking at the new Polish tree, this is also another limiting factor on mission tree design for formable non-endgame tags.

I think it would be great, if there was more work dedicated on game balance. Also taking into account a lot of the lesser known quirks of the EU4 systems. The real power of ship durability serves as a good example here. Probably there are certain established ratios of modifiers which are used in designing modifier rewards. But in some cases like naval quality bonuses these ratios are just way off. There is a lot of room to make the game more interesting, if these ratios were rebalanced, as there are quite a few choices in EU4 which are actually no choices at all, if one just knows the game mechanics.

 

[annulen]

Also taking into account a lot of the lesser known quirks of the EU4 systems. The real power of ship durability serves as a good example here.

Could you please explain what "real power of ship durability" is (or give a link)? AFAIK ship durability acts like a multiplier for ship's hull size which is quite intuitive.

 

[MrSnert]

One thing I do not like about mission trees is the strong link between flavor and power they often have.

The quality of the content in the latest versions has been quite a bit higher than in the previous versions and I understand that it is almost impossible to provide such content to all nations at once. The unfortunate thing here is that not only do countries have widely different flavor standards but also widely different balance standards.

This, I think is the core of the issue. There are many missions that add flavour but don't necessarily upset the balance, in fact if the missions are tied to unique disasters as is the case with Dai Viet for example it can add a lot of flavour but not make the nation any stronger compared to its neighbours. Obviously countless such missions can be thought up.

Now I've heard dev's say that every new DLC and it's missions have to be 'exciting' for the purchasers, and they seem to think 'exciting' means 'powerful', but I would argue that any flavour can be exciting, and that getting missions/flavour to every region of the world is pretty exciting in and of itself.

I mean come on, if you're going to base youre entire marketing/sales strategy on endlessly reselling us this feature called missions at least have a little faith in it!

 

[annulen]

There are many missions that add flavour but don't necessarily upset the balance, in fact if the missions are tied to unique disasters as is the case with Dai Viet for example it can add a lot of flavour but not make the nation any stronger compared to its neighbours. Obviously countless such missions can be thought up.

Actually yes, this is a kind of tag-specific missions that I have nothing against.

Now I've heard dev's say that every new DLC and it's missions have to be 'exciting' for the purchasers, and they seem to think 'exciting' means 'powerful', but I would argue that any flavour can be exciting, and that getting missions/flavour to every region of the world is pretty exciting in and of itself.

If missions unlock some new powerful mechanic at the end, it can be fun. But if they are granting some insanely overpowered permanent modifier - no thanks, that's boring.

 

[Tempscire]

Could you please explain what "real power of ship durability" is (or give a link)? AFAIK ship durability acts like a multiplier for ship's hull size which is quite intuitive.

Ship durability only affects hull damage and not morale damage. For a source see the naval part of the following DD:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...velopment-diary-14th-of-january-2020.1307998/
Or just test it yourself.

Therefore, it is far worse than one would think. The most common ratio in modifiers is 5% ship durability is as good as 10% naval morale. I.e. durability should be as good as discipline. But discipline increases all damage and reduces all damage, while durability only reduces hull damage. If one assumes hull and morale damage to be of equal importance, this would mean that durability would need to be 4 times as strong as it is now to be roughly comparable to morale. But in reality morale damage is far more important than hull damage in naval combat, as ships with 0 morale can not deal damage, receive 10 times as much hull damage and only have a daily chance to retreat.

Therefore, ship durability modifiers would need to be increased to at least 4 times their current value to be in any way competitive with morale modifiers. And if one has to decide between different modifiers, the choice is always clear, if one just knows how naval combat works exactly. To be fair there are very few people who do, but still I do find just knowing which modifiers are good or bad to be somewhat lacking from a strategy point of view.

There are also a lot of other problems with naval combat, like galleys being far worse than heavy ships (since 1.31) which effectively remove a large part of game options (like building galleys unless one has far more galley CA than heavy ship CA). They could really need a rebalance, as the systems are very one-dimensional. Even if galleys were just buffed (like at the beginning of patch 1.31), one can run in the situation where galleys are just better than heavy ships. A good solution would be a system where mixed fleets are better, as it no longer degenerates into a system where one only cares about one ship type for combat.

The same applies to land combat. Currently cavalry is mostly bad. But buffing cavalry to such a degree that it is clearly better than infantry, would mean that one wants to have as much cavalry as possible. A better solution would be to have cavalry and infantry strength depend on the cav to infantry ratio. Like we have it now but in an expanded way. For example by extending the tactics modifier of the changed cavalry to infantry system in 1.34 also to positive tactics modifiers.
Then the less cav one has the better it gets. Therefore, one always wants to have a certain equilibrium (depending on modifiers) of cavalry, instead of always wanting no cavalry or as much as possible. Mathematically speaking this is the idea that the strength function of an army depending on the unit ratio should be concave. This leads to interesting decisions and not to clear optimal choices and traps for newer players and the AI.

 

[iClipse]

Ship durability only affects hull damage and not morale damage. For a source see the naval part of the following DD:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...velopment-diary-14th-of-january-2020.1307998/
Or just test it yourself.

Therefore, it is far worse than one would think. The most common ratio in modifiers is 5% ship durability is as good as 10% naval morale. I.e. durability should be as good as discipline. But discipline increases all damage and reduces all damage, while durability only reduces hull damage. If one assumes hull and morale damage to be of equal importance, this would mean that durability would need to be 4 times as strong as it is now to be roughly comparable to morale. But in reality morale damage is far more important than hull damage in naval combat, as ships with 0 morale can not deal damage, receive 10 times as much hull damage and only have a daily chance to retreat.

Therefore, ship durability modifiers would need to be increased to at least 4 times their current value to be in any way competitive with morale modifiers. And if one has to decide between different modifiers, the choice is always clear, if one just knows how naval combat works exactly. To be fair there are very few people who do, but still I do find just knowing which modifiers are good or bad to be somewhat lacking from a strategy point of view.

There are also a lot of other problems with naval combat, like galleys being far worse than heavy ships (since 1.31) which effectively remove a large part of game options (like building galleys unless one has far more galley CA than heavy ship CA). They could really need a rebalance, as the systems are very one-dimensional. Even if galleys were just buffed (like at the beginning of patch 1.31), one can run in the situation where galleys are just better than heavy ships. A good solution would be a system where mixed fleets are better, as it no longer degenerates into a system where one only cares about one ship type for combat.

The same applies to land combat. Currently cavalry is mostly bad. But buffing cavalry to such a degree that it is clearly better than infantry, would mean that one wants to have as much cavalry as possible. A better solution would be to have cavalry and infantry strength depend on the cav to infantry ratio. Like we have it now but in an expanded way. For example by extending the tactics modifier of the changed cavalry to infantry system in 1.34 also to positive tactics modifiers.
Then the less cav one has the better it gets. Therefore, one always wants to have a certain equilibrium (depending on modifiers) of cavalry, instead of always wanting no cavalry or as much as possible. Mathematically speaking this is the idea that the strength function of an army depending on the unit ratio should be concave. This leads to interesting decisions and not to clear optimal choices and traps for newer players and the AI.

This is a fantastic post and one I hope the devs see.

 

[WeissRaben]

Want to play Colonial? Play England, Portugal. Want colonial with a lot of economic/trade stuff in between? Play the Netherlands. Want to play a Horde? You have several to choose from with different mission trees. National ideas often gear towards these same playstyles already, and national ideas were here from the start. And while you might not like national ideas, for me they're the prime source of replayability.

This is exactly the main flaw of EU4, for me. No, I don't want to have to play England or Portugal to play maximally colonial. I want to be able to play ten France playthroughs, and play every single one of them in a different way. "Play this nation for this playstyle" is for me the exact opposite of replayability.

I suppose that's why I haven't played a single vanilla game in the best part of five years, by this point. I only go CK2/3 > EU4, so the world is guaranteed to be too different for any preconception to make sense.

 

[Arizal]

This is exactly the main flaw of EU4, for me. No, I don't want to have to play England or Portugal to play maximally colonial. I want to be able to play ten France playthroughs, and play every single one of them in a different way. "Play this nation for this playstyle" is for me the exact opposite of replayability.

I suppose that's why I haven't played a single vanilla game in the best part of five years, by this point. I only go CK2/3 > EU4, so the world is guaranteed to be too different for any preconception to make sense.

It’s difficult to overstate how much I agree with you. So much that I have nothing to add. I already said my piece earlier in this thread.

 

[adin85]

Guys you dont need click mission button. You are free. Problem resolve.

 

[noblehunter]

One challenge Paradox has with Mission Tree and National Focus based DLC is how to retro-fit improvements into old DLC. It seems like they're developing the tools to enable different play-styles in the country with branching missions. Why should Gotland/Denmark have a more interest mission tree than France?

 

[YellowPress]

One challenge Paradox has with Mission Tree and National Focus based DLC is how to retro-fit improvements into old DLC. It seems like they're developing the tools to enable different play-styles in the country with branching missions. Why should Gotland/Denmark have a more interest mission tree than France?

I mean france has a really good mission tree atm

This is exactly the main flaw of EU4, for me. No, I don't want to have to play England or Portugal to play maximally colonial. I want to be able to play ten France playthroughs, and play every single one of them in a different way. "Play this nation for this playstyle" is for me the exact opposite of replayability.

I suppose that's why I haven't played a single vanilla game in the best part of five years, by this point. I only go CK2/3 > EU4, so the world is guaranteed to be too different for any preconception to make sense.

Then why haven't you played a game in five years if you have so many options? Colonial austria can be done, I've done it before, just beating ottos down and centralising empire is more fun

 

[csward53]

I sort of agree that getting random PUs and other things happening were a lot more fun. Things are fairly static and routine. I think that comes down to the mission tree. Making the AI go after the mission tree more might be a bad thing. Yet colonization is still a mess. I don't know. The estate changes plus the mission tree has definitely hurt the balance of the base game. Everyone's ahead on tech around the world and institutions are meaningless. Oh well. This game has had too long of a tail. Devs should have ended development ages ago and focused on a sequel.

 

[csward53]

I agree, I feel like the mission rewards from the last few DLCs are getting ridiculously OP - with the upcoming DLC taking it to a silly extreme. Really, as Gotland you will get 500 ducats and +5 gold/month just for improving relations with someone? You might as well just enable the console and cheat…

With that being said, I liked the idea of missions in general - as a nudge to progress a certain way, or just to give you a little bit of narrative around your progress. Not as a replacement of cheats though…

Getting a free renaissance spawn as Songhai at the cost of 25 gov't reform is pretty OP as well, but you get it almost right away from the mission tree. Found that out today. Strange design choice because it's so overpowered. Is that what they think we want? It should be me more like the old mission system in that it's an outline to get to the historical events or it allows things to happen that can't in the normal game rules. Come to think of it this started with the Austria expansion. I didn't think their plan was just to give every nation OP mission trees for the player to steamroll the AI.

 

[WeissRaben]

Then why haven't you played a game in five years if you have so many options? Colonial austria can be done, I've done it before, just beating ottos down and centralising empire is more fun

Because I don't have those options. That's the point of my post. There were times when it seemed like stuff was going in that direction - local autonomy and reworked estates are the primary points of delusion - but for the most part, EU4 glosses over the internal state of the country except for mechanics that say how it should be. And as you said, it's "just more fun" to follow the river where it wants to lead you, because when you step out of it there is... very little.

 

[iClipse]

This is exactly the main flaw of EU4, for me. No, I don't want to have to play England or Portugal to play maximally colonial. I want to be able to play ten France playthroughs, and play every single one of them in a different way. "Play this nation for this playstyle" is for me the exact opposite of replayability.

I suppose that's why I haven't played a single vanilla game in the best part of five years, by this point. I only go CK2/3 > EU4, so the world is guaranteed to be too different for any preconception to make sense.

You can still play France in ten different ways though? If you don't go colonial, you don't get the bonus to...colonialism. Shocking.

You can:
1) try and play to form Roman Empire
2) try and become the HRE
3) play colonial
4) do big blue blob
5) do a max subject run with the special French estate privilege (seize Norway, Sweden, Naples and then vasalise everyone around you)
6) do a max Morale stacking run with French's rare +20% Morale. Become reformed, get defensive ideas and stackwipe everyone
7) try and convert to a funny religion (Ibadi French?)
8) French is not and endgame nation, so do some funny culture conversions and become Germany or Italy
9) Tall French
10) Become the prussia of Europe by focusing on mil bonusses (or even become Prussia)

And none of these are hampered by mission tree.

If the argument is again that the devs should be focusing their time on something else, then we're doing circles, but I'm guessing we're doing that already.