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

[Arizal]

I see where you’re coming from, and generally agree. But as Gotland, you’re a OPM.

If you just want to take Denmark “eventually”, you can snag opportunities around the Baltic for a few centuries and then do it.

If you want to start straight in, you’d need that kind of cash to even have a chance of taking down Denmark, it’s allies, plus Sweden and Norway, before your starting king dies.

Then that means you are not playing by the game “normal” rules and you expect to get a boost representing months of monthly incomes for a small effort.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

Then that means you are not playing by the game “normal” rules and you expect to get a boost representing months of monthly incomes for a small effort.

And who defines “normal”, you?
I certainly don’t, I’m nowhere near the “normal” EU4 user experience.

Historically, this deposed king puttered around the Baltic as a pirate for the remainder of his days. That “normal” reality is now represented in game.

Another option is also the deposed king attempts to reclaim his throne. Paradox likely looked at what kind of resources would it take for an OPM to knock off Denmark, any typical allies, plus a still loyal Sweden and Norway, and this is what they came up with. You can argue that the support as mentioned in the Dev diary is to generous, but what would you propose instead? You can argue about other means of getting support. One idea that came to me was by temporarily forging several alliances with, and the immediate granting of 10-20 favors with, Denmark’s rivals so the player can quickly call them into a war.

What you can’t do is argue that the entire setup doesn’t belong, because then you’re no longer asking for a sandbox, you’re asking for a simulation.

 

[st360]

For me mission trees are more 'tutorial' (= if you don't know what you want/can do, look at there) than mandatory 'game-flow'. If mission tree isn't pointing to the direction I like to go/develop, I ignore it and go with my own.

Have I understood something wrong? This is sincere question.

The problem is that most missions are really easy and along your way. While new mission rewards are completely overtuned (and unique). Leading to a game where not revolving yourself around missions is starting to just be bad game play.

For instance, you could ignore the army rules and have cavalry only armies as France, or ignore trade completely, not even assign merchants and "play it your way" as a tax-only Venice.

Think I'm exaggerating? In yesterdays development diary, a one province nation just got a "mission" where you get 30 years of national income for free. In the diary before that, you get a "mission" as a personal union subject to raise your liberty desire and get multiple great powers as free allies.

And with developers doing almost exclusively mission based content for the last few years, this means that the development for EU 4 has 90% stopped if you don't play missions.

 

[vitek69]

I see where you’re coming from, and generally agree. But as Gotland, you’re a OPM.

If you just want to take Denmark “eventually”, you can snag opportunities around the Baltic for a few centuries and then do it.

If you want to start straight in, you’d need that kind of cash to even have a chance of taking down Denmark, it’s allies, plus Sweden and Norway, before your starting king dies.

Sorry but I neither agree with the idea that difficult starts should receive artificial buffs to make them easier, nor with the statement that it’s necessary. Us players can take out Ottos as Byz or Knights, I’m sure we would come up with a viable strat for Gotland as well.
If playing these nations is too difficult for some players (and there’s no shame in that, we were all new players at some point!), you can always lower the game’s difficulty. But giving the player buffs that border on cheats if you pay for a DLC? I don’t like this approach at all

 

[Anna_Gein]

Yeah the game is following in HoI4 footsteps indeed.

Tbh I hate it.


Edit : To clarify a little bit, I feel like this philosophy of scripted events & rewards, whether they are called mission tree or national focus, are fundamentally running counter the the concept of a sandbox grand strategy game. Instead of be given a large range of tools to lead your nations across the centuries, we are given railroaded scripted events which reduced our freedom and our agency.

An example with mission tree free and permanent claims : as the ottoman we are led to fight war deep into Eastern Anatolia before we are given the opportunity to push in the Levant and Egypt. It hardly makes senses from a strategic and a gameplay point of view as there are only small or relatively small nations there. None of which share our culture group. The regions are also poorer than the Levant and Egypt. While in the south there is the powerful Mamluk Egypt who can become a threat and those territory can quickly become profitable. Yet we can not focus on Levant & Egypt first, then the eastern fringe of Anatolia and the Caucassus : the mission tree is not designed that way.

I should add that I understand a large part of missions trees exist to offer permanent claims in a order to simulate roughly historical expansion (obviously I am not referring to memey trees designed for small nations that never expended or indeed existed at all as independent). But to me it begs a rework of how claims works so they are less restrictive or happen more often without going completely free. That is certainly something I would like to see rework in an hypothetical EU V.

As I recall, Imperator Rome suffered from the same problem once mission trees were introduced and I remember how you could miss big bonuses if you deviated even slightly from some mission trees scripts.

Broadly speaking, I feel like the last DLC by PDX, be it for EUIV or HoI4 are more about the devs telling stories through mission trees / national focus than actually a change, addition and improvement to the sandbox grand strategy experience. As someone said, stories told through console scripts.

Now I dont necessarily mind against story driven strategy game. I love what Torpor Games did with Suzerain. It is just that this is not what I thought EU and HoI are. Or any Paradox style GDS.

 

[iClipse]

I'm on the camp of I love mission trees. That said:

1) I like it more when they're somewhat concise. Take for example Bharat mission tree. Small, but the rewards are very meaningful. When it's this huge mission I feel like I'm watching the mission tree more than actually playing the game. And especially missions like 'get loyalty and influence above x' really get on the nerves, because the moment you miss some modifiers expiring it's often harder to complete in just a moment's notice.

2) I do feel that a lot of development focus is on the mission trees. The last year mechanics are being revisited, but actually new or reworked mechanics have been lacking for some time now.

 

[YellowPress]

And who defines “normal”, you?
I certainly don’t, I’m nowhere near the “normal” EU4 user experience.

Historically, this deposed king puttered around the Baltic as a pirate for the remainder of his days. That “normal” reality is now represented in game.

Another option is also the deposed king attempts to reclaim his throne. Paradox likely looked at what kind of resources would it take for an OPM to knock off Denmark, any typical allies, plus a still loyal Sweden and Norway, and this is what they came up with. You can argue that the support as mentioned in the Dev diary is to generous, but what would you propose instead? You can argue about other means of getting support. One idea that came to me was by temporarily forging several alliances with, and the immediate granting of 10-20 favors with, Denmark’s rivals so the player can quickly call them into a war.

What you can’t do is argue that the entire setup doesn’t belong, because then you’re no longer asking for a sandbox, you’re asking for a simulation.

But we won't get a sandbox, as devs said ai will always go pirate, and for player, you'd only go monarchy focus tree (as thats what these really are now) if you wanted denmark

 

[Wenla]

Permaclaims, pu cbs, permanent modifiers, why would you ignore this if its your mission tree and part of the dlc you paid for?

Of course I use those if they are going to direction I like to go. Mission tree shouldn't tell me where to go, I like to do it my self.

When I play, what I'm wanting: not extreme success but great fun. That's my goal.

 

[Northernwwater]

I like mission trees. It makes for something to study and think about how to accomplish. I consider them mini achievements.

Achievements and mission trees are simply interesting goals to reach. Sometimes I make up my own goals. I often search through the strategic resources and find a modifier I want and then set a goal to take the provinces, and adjust my trade choices, needed to gain the modifier.

 

[Arizal]

And who defines “normal”, you?
I certainly don’t, I’m nowhere near the “normal” EU4 user experience.

Historically, this deposed king puttered around the Baltic as a pirate for the remainder of his days. That “normal” reality is now represented in game.

Another option is also the deposed king attempts to reclaim his throne. Paradox likely looked at what kind of resources would it take for an OPM to knock off Denmark, any typical allies, plus a still loyal Sweden and Norway, and this is what they came up with. You can argue that the support as mentioned in the Dev diary is to generous, but what would you propose instead? You can argue about other means of getting support. One idea that came to me was by temporarily forging several alliances with, and the immediate granting of 10-20 favors with, Denmark’s rivals so the player can quickly call them into a war.

What you can’t do is argue that the entire setup doesn’t belong, because then you’re no longer asking for a sandbox, you’re asking for a simulation.

That's why I hesitated to use "normal"... That word, the "norm", is in itself empty and depends on how each person views the topic and, at the maximum, shared assumptions... which we clearly don't have.

If we go for a temporal explanation, mission trees were introduced in 2018, after 18 years of existence of the EU franchise. They are still a relatively new mechanic. Yet at this point they have been there for almost half of EUIV run. Many people seem to enjoy them, and the devs seem to love making them. I may be in the minority who absolutely hates them. There are quite a few features, by now, that I at least dislike in EUIV, but we are not talking about those.

So, what did I mean by "normal"? I meant that, as mission trees were introduced long after EUIV release. There previously were random missions, that's true. They were however a side feature which wasn't thought of that much and only aimed at giving some (dreaded) flavour to countries. The mission trees were tacked on a previously autonomous system. That is, EUIV without mission trees made sense. You selected a country and played with the tools that were available to you, which were the same tools other countries had. The initial position was different, but you could expect to have a chance to get the tools the other countries had with effort, or at least there were explanations as to why you didn't have access to some, in-game explanations (like being a nomadic country).

That framework has taken a backseat. Nowaday, every country is a special snowflake with its unique history and limited possibilities. Limited because the expected history of a country now lies in a few branches the content creators have decided should take precedence over the game's mechanics. This country will grow in that direction and this one will specialize in this... without regards to how things evolve in-game.

You talk about the DD about Gotland. I don't care! I didn't even read the thing. Lately the DDs have been super boring, because I skip everything with the word "mission" on it. That leaves very few paragraphs.

You say the Gotland mission tree is meant to represent the unique situation of the exiled Danish king. Nice, I didn’t know about this part of Scandinavian history.

Here is how they could have approached this : make a mechanic by which deposed kings can, if they hold a TAG for enough time, become their ruler and have a CB that would allow them to retrieve their country with less AE and without OE (since it’s their land). Make them start at war with their former country.

And of course, if you want to teach history, by all mean accompany the generic events by an historical explanation of what happened in the country.

Why should everything be particular? Denmark wasn’t the only country that had his king deposed and which said king exiled himself somewhere in hope of regaining his crown.

Approaching history through unique events and missions also has the downside that the rest of the game feels barren past the first few years because all this diversity of situation they add is seen only once.

 

[Olaf Trygvasson]

I like the idea of missions, but I hate how powerful they are becoming. For example, I think a good idea for a mission would be for France to kick England out of France- and a proper reward would be some prestige and legitimacy, maybe a bit of mana (~25 points). Where it’s a reward, but really it’s just there to represent the intangible benefits of achieving a goal that your people want. What I find ridiculous is when missions start giving army morale, discipline, admin efficiency, etc that starts really changing how powerful your country is- ESPECIALLY because the AI doesn’t use missions effectively, especially compared to the player.

TLDR missions are fine but they should just be representing the attitudes of your people at the time, and shouldn’t be ways to buff your country- temporarily or long term- to be more powerful

 

[FleetingRain]

It's even funnier because Johan (iirc) said he would not have added mission trees to the game because of the massive work it is to implement and maintain them.

But it seems the playerbase/marketing team likes them, so.

 

[Arizal]

It's even funnier because Johan (iirc) said he would not have added mission trees to the game because of the massive work it is to implement and maintain them.

But it seems the playerbase/marketing team likes them, so.

I think he said it was impossible to balance. So apparently they decided to not balance them and to ruin EUIV while they work on EUV, which hopefully won’t have as much ridiculous features.

 

[Northernwwater]

I think he said it was impossible to balance. So apparently they decided to not balance them and to ruin EUIV while they work on EUV, which hopefully won’t have as much ridiculous features.

I'm sure it will have prettier pictures.

 

[brifbates]

Sorry but I neither agree with the idea that difficult starts should receive artificial buffs to make them easier, nor with the statement that it’s necessary. Us players can take out Ottos as Byz or Knights, I’m sure we would come up with a viable strat for Gotland as well.
If playing these nations is too difficult for some players (and there’s no shame in that, we were all new players at some point!), you can always lower the game’s difficulty. But giving the player buffs that border on cheats if you pay for a DLC? I don’t like this approach at all

So much this. The current laughable state of the Ottomans is a direct result of this sort of attitude. Instead of being the biggest bads around they are a joke so mediocre players can beat them with Byzantium regularly. Hard starts should be hard, not trivialized by insane boosts or extreme nerfs to the neighbors.

 

[PrussicAcid]

It's even funnier because Johan (iirc) said he would not have added mission trees to the game because of the massive work it is to implement and maintain them.

But it seems the playerbase/marketing team likes them, so.

Yo do remember correctly: https://www.pcgamesn.com/europa-universalis-iv/dlc-change

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I liked when missions were broad goals based on game state, and would have preferred to see that expanded. What we have now is more like HOI focus trees with (sometimes) more conditions. Anbennar has this syndrome too. Nations need a mission tree or they are considered to "have no content". Nevermind their unique position in the world (which uses a non-Earth map with multiple non-trivial interactions with species/relations/modifiers/terrain/etc), if they don't have a mission tree with sometimes convoluted requirements where some branches can occasionally be permanently locked away (or close) based on non-player choices/actions, it's "not content", sigh.

The vanilla implementation continues to bother me too, because it is TAG magic. There's generally a problem if you hold all other factors equal, change TAG name, and get massive differences in abilities, rewards, options, etc. I realize that this argument extends past mission trees. I hold that it remains applicable. At least in Anbennar, magic is part of the setting. Seeing nations get something comparable to "plant growth spell" in vanilla because of their TAG mission rewards in a way unique to only that TAG is...a bit less "lore-consistent" ^_^.

Edit : To clarify a little bit, I feel like this philosophy of scripted events & rewards, whether they are called mission tree or national focus, are fundamentally running counter the the concept of a sandbox grand strategy game.

In HOI 4 it goes so far as outright breaking the game. In a game about fighting war for territory, you are actively disincentivized to join factions (against some focus trees) and can have land taken from you without being at war, and without fighting a war to defend that territory. Focuses also result in blatantly rule-breaking outcomes, like Communist China leaving/joining factions mid-war and calling the world in on you, or magic world-spanning civil war of a high-stability country > 300 days before the timer says it can happen.

EU 4 has kept this to a minimum in the past, mostly just breaking the game occasionally with BI/Dutch revolts or Crimean succession. But it's had creeping super missions for some time now :/.

 

[Arizal]

The vanilla implementation continues to bother me too, because it is TAG magic. There's generally a problem if you hold all other factors equal, change TAG name, and get massive differences in abilities, rewards, options, etc. I realize that this argument extends past mission trees. I hold that it remains applicable.

Exactly! Because the game is ultimately rather shallow in how each country works internally, they have resorted to mission trees, national ideas and unique government reforms to make them more unique.

But all of this is completely missing the point of showing how those countries actually worked and evolved, of showing how they were different and alike, putting in its place meme countries that are as deep in their depiction as a puddle.

I once hoped for Paradox to improve the way their games depict the world. Sadly they didn’t go that way.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I'm sure it will have prettier pictures.

you say that like it's a bad thing

 

[Northernwwater]

In HOI 4 it goes so far as outright breaking the game. In a game about fighting war for territory, you are actively disincentivized to join factions (against some focus trees) and can have land taken from you without being at war, and without fighting a war to defend that territory. Focuses also result in blatantly rule-breaking outcomes, like Communist China leaving/joining factions mid-war and calling the world in on you, or magic world-spanning civil war of a high-stability country > 300 days before the timer says it can happen.

EU 4 has kept this to a minimum in the past, mostly just breaking the game occasionally with BI/Dutch revolts or Crimean succession. But it's had creeping super missions for some time now :/.

Hyperbole.