What are Your most important wishes for EU5 mechanics?

[Johan]

For me, I just want the devs to learn from Vic3’s mistakes. A total sandbox where all nations have almost the same mechanics doesn’t work very well. EUV should embrace the shocking amount of diversity and complexity in governments of the era across the globe. Obviously a lot of players love the conquest loop, and want a map painter, but I think that the game should force them to deal with the internal factors of the various powers that alternately forced and hindered conquest. The core gameplay should be dealing with vassals and the estates to try and keep your country stable

I completely agree. It was the #1 lesson I learned from Imperator, (that mana is heavily disliked was #3, and #2 was that people prefer a more of a simulation, instead of boardgame feel). In imperator there was only four different types of mechanics for countries, republics, monarchies, settled tribes and migratory tribes, and hardly any unique content otherwise at release.

 

[Johan]

What was preventing Sweden from becoming a trading and colonial power and Portugal from becoming an “army with a state”, hiring out its Iberian space marines as mercenaries feared across Europe?

All of the playstyles you’ve listed and more should be in the game and viable, but they should be emergent from the position a country is in and the way it’s run, not inextricably tied to the tag you choose.

Geography would still drive a lot of the needs. In the 1444, Sweden has basically no seaport on the west coast, and is a firmly baltic sea focused country.

 

[Johan]

Sweden fighting Spain 1634 - Swedish defeat

We can have plenty of debates that all countries deserve similar bonuses, but using the Battle of Nördlingen as an example of swedish army being overrated is not the best one, considering almost half of it was german militia.

With eu4 mechanics and stats, the results would be similar most of the time.

 

[Johan]

I hope EU V does not follow the tracks of CK3 & Vic 3 and gets events with fixed costs instead. It is wild and somewhat immersion breaking when a few trinkets cost as much as a 50k army or the development of an entire county. Likewise, when a banket, as magnificent as it can be, cost as much as a Man o War or a massive castle. The events about the philosophical department or the canned food opener in VIc 3 ...

I understand the devs want to keep the balance of the game. But imo it should be worked on with the events buff/debuff values instead of the event costs. Events should be mainly about roleplaying and breaking monotony.

For perspective : during its construction, Versailles costed between 2% and 4% of France annual budget. A lot in raw numbers. But for comparison, the land forces alone took 75% of the annual budget during wartime aka most of Louis XIV reign. And it was not sufficient to cover all the costs of the land forces. Far from it.

It is insane and immersion breaking when a funeral cost as much as 2/5 years of annual budget.

This is one of the more common arguments for more currencies in the game that is not directly connected to gold.

 

[Johan]

Pops in paradox games means annoying micromanagement and performance problems with little or no "fun" to show for it.

While we had a bit of annoying micromanagement with Pops in Vicky 1, like manually splitting pops and promoting them, at least In the game I did the software architecture for with pops, ie Victoria 1, Victoria 2, EU:Rome & Imperator , pops were never impacting any performance in any noticable way.

Technically eu1, eu2 and eu3 had population simulation as well, but it was just a number that primarily impacted the amount of production from the province, and people usually do not refer to it as "pops".

 

[Johan]

While you could ignore it the pop management in Imperator was just annoying micromanagement.

You refering to moving slaves around?

its not ideal, and should have been more of a toggle/priority system

 

[Johan]

Samarkand is good example - great city at the start of the game but should it be over 20 dev province in 1600 or later?

Did it decline much though before the Russian conquest?