What are Your most important wishes for EU5 mechanics?

[Testeria]

Personally - I would love to see more CHOICES integrated into EU5 systems. For example: sure, absolutism may be good for many reasons but let the player CHOSE low absolutism for some other bonus (for example I once proposed that Husaria unit would be much stronger with low absolutism).

Someone else proposed that high manpower means growing unemployment ergo growing unrest.

Make all the absurdly good choices in EU4 break something else and add to trouble.

What kind of new features do you wish for - mechanic wise?

 

[Hezekiah]

I'd like navies to matter in EU5.

 

[Blindbohemian]

My key wish for EUV is that the design team puts some emphasis on implementing the concept and significance of natural borders. In EUIV a Spain that controls Iberia south of the Pyrenees will immediately start sniffing around and expanding, if it can, into France. Or France will come the other way. The Ottomans will wander into the steppe. Bengal will conquer its way across the Himalaya and into the Taklamakan. In reality challenges like the projection of force, the maintenance of defensible boundaries and the assertion of authority meant that holding to natural boundaries like the Khyber Pass often made more net sense than accepting the costs of expansion beyond a natural border. I think that’s the key problem with blobs with EUIV as it stands: sure, they’re extremely stable, but they also have absolutely no reason to—as historical countries always did—go “actually no, conquering Brittanny would just give us an even longer and less defensible border with the French, let’s take some money and go back to our island”.

 

[InvisibleBison]

My key wish for EUV is that the design team puts some emphasis on implementing the concept and significance of natural borders. In EUIV a Spain that controls Iberia south of the Pyrenees will immediately start sniffing around and expanding, if it can, into France. Or France will come the other way. The Ottomans will wander into the steppe. Bengal will conquer its way across the Himalaya and into the Taklamakan. In reality challenges like the projection of force, the maintenance of defensible boundaries and the assertion of authority meant that holding to natural boundaries like the Khyber Pass often made more net sense than accepting the costs of expansion beyond a natural border. I think that’s the key problem with blobs with EUIV as it stands: sure, they’re extremely stable, but they also have absolutely no reason to—as historical countries always did—go “actually no, conquering Brittanny would just give us an even longer and less defensible border with the French, let’s take some money and go back to our island”.

Perhaps, if forts work the same as they do in EUIV, they could only be constructed in specific locations along natural borders.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Perhaps, if forts work the same as they do in EUIV, they could only be constructed in specific locations along natural borders.

Maybe. This seems needlessly deterministic, to me. I think work on other mechanics could make natural borders emerge as it were naturally:

• if non-accepted cultures actually meant something (e.g non accepted cultures should never lose separatism),
• if separatism meant that autonomy trends strongly upwards and has to be counterbalanced, and that peace treaties can include a demand that X culture or X religion be granted a chunk of autonomy,
• if autonomy trended toward an equilibrium instead of zero,
• if autonomy was affected by terrain (mountains are impossible to make not-at-all-autonomous in 1444–1821) and adjacency to autonomy was impactful (you might police your heartland real good but you can’t stop those damn brigands coming out of high-autonomy border areas to raid your rich lowlands),
• if the autonomy equilibrium point (and deterioration/increase) was affected by distance and distance was modified by terrain (Lhasa should count as further from Kathmandu than Comorin),
• if autonomy trending up was fairly normal and something you have to conscientiously resist by stationing troops and building forts in distant territories, so that maintaining distant, hostile-terrain territory has a significant cost and imposes a meaningful cost in wartime (trade control over my Iraqi fringe territories for victory in my war in Khwarazm?),
• if autonomy, once granted, is very hard to rescind (e.g 100% autonomy should be a daimyo-like vassal that can defend its autonomy and even independence by external diplomacy and force of arms)…

…if mechanical tweaks like that were implemented I think “natural borders” would swiftly become an actual (but not impossible to overcome) concern for many players. If the AI could be taught to understand that mountain, forest and river frontiers are more defensible than alternatives, it could understand the same thing. I don’t know that we need specific natural-border mechanics to achieve that goal.

Edit: similar considerations could be added to maintaining occupations. If occupying territory cost—as it does and always has—a significant fraction of the wealth and manpower that it took to capture that territory, total wars as we see in EUIV would go away entirely. We don’t need special mechanics to do that, we just need to make it untenable for the real-life reasons it was untenable: because you needed too many resources spread ever more thin to maintain control; because the people didn’t want to be occupied; because keeping control of difficult terrain is almost impossible, and so on.

 

[TheCleanerDragon]

Edit: similar considerations could be added to maintaining occupations. If occupying territory cost—as it does and always has—a significant fraction of the wealth and manpower that it took to capture that territory, total wars as we see in EUIV would go away entirely. We don’t need special mechanics to do that, we just need to make it untenable for the real-life reasons it was untenable: because you needed too many resources spread ever more thin to maintain control; because the people didn’t want to be occupied; because keeping control of difficult terrain is almost impossible, and so on.

I would love to see something like Hoi4's occupation system, where holding land costs manpower and equipment (or some EUV equivalent) and the player has control over their occupation policy.

 

[Anna_Gein]

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.

 

[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.

 

[Delterius]

What I really wish for is some sort of overhaul for colonial mechanics. Aside from the fact that it's been the same since forever, one of my frustrations in EU4 is that I can't really 'roleplay' Portugal. Their maritime expansion in Africa and Asia was driven by forts, trade posts, alliances with local powers and conquering key cities. In EU4 trade posts is a thing that only Merchant Republics can build and the natural conclusion of the mostly empty African coasts is that you want to literally encircle the south atlantic, rather than to fight over strategic natural harbors. If you don't colonize it all then others will. And it won't take very long either. Contrast that with the european presence in the region prior to the 1800s and it's a bit absurd.

 

[cursorhiker]

My main wish for EU5 is that they stay away from pops, and keep the core game pretty similar to what EU4 is now.

The main reasons people want some form of pops is to 1) represent minority cultures and religions 2) make "dev" a bit more granular and less gamey 3) put some teeth in colonial mechanics such that Portugal can't colonize the entirety of America. There may be other ways to represent that, but in general that's why people like pops.

Military wise, aside from costs/logistics, the main limitation on having a strong military through most of history wasn't so much manpower as it was trained manpower.

Modelling all these factors could make the game much more complex flavorful while presenting the player with alternate playstyles that scale differently over the campaign. Despite some encouraging steps, modern Paradox games haven't really done a good job at capturing them though. CK3 takes a good stab at distinguishing between trained and untrained troops with its levy/MAA system but has issues with how jank and exploitable it is. Vic3's military interest group and IR's legion commander loyalty start to model the political risks/tradeoffs that come with a military, but don't really pull in all the socioeconomic factors as well. Hopefully EU5 will build off both and deliver a new system that is better at modelling the various military models of the time period and their political/economic tradeoffs.

Agreed, at game start standing armies should be an anomaly. Late game professionalism should be the name of the game and large numbers of untrained levies should be an active hindrance. Representing things like the British national militia as the "endgame" of levies would be good too, and making it such that certain forces could only be used to defend the homeland (or colonies in the case of colonial militia) would be useful. In addition, representing auxiliary forces like the French and British's Indian allies during the Seven Years War or the British reliance on sepoys would be good.

I'd like navies to matter in EU5.

+1. The entire naval game is in dire need of an overhaul, but many core systems would need to change as well.

Maybe. This seems needlessly deterministic, to me. I think work on other mechanics could make natural borders emerge as it were naturally:

• if non-accepted cultures actually meant something (e.g non accepted cultures should never lose separatism),
• if separatism meant that autonomy trends strongly upwards and has to be counterbalanced, and that peace treaties can include a demand that X culture or X religion be granted a chunk of autonomy,
• if autonomy trended toward an equilibrium instead of zero,
• if autonomy was affected by terrain (mountains are impossible to make not-at-all-autonomous in 1444–1821) and adjacency to autonomy was impactful (you might police your heartland real good but you can’t stop those damn brigands coming out of high-autonomy border areas to raid your rich lowlands),
• if the autonomy equilibrium point (and deterioration/increase) was affected by distance and distance was modified by terrain (Lhasa should count as further from Kathmandu than Comorin),
• if autonomy trending up was fairly normal and something you have to conscientiously resist by stationing troops and building forts in distant territories, so that maintaining distant, hostile-terrain territory has a significant cost and imposes a meaningful cost in wartime (trade control over my Iraqi fringe territories for victory in my war in Khwarazm?),
• if autonomy, once granted, is very hard to rescind (e.g 100% autonomy should be a daimyo-like vassal that can defend its autonomy and even independence by external diplomacy and force of arms)…

It does kill me that autonomy is so underutilized in EU4. All great suggestions.

What I really wish for is some sort of overhaul for colonial mechanics. Aside from the fact that it's been the same since forever, one of my frustrations in EU4 is that I can't really 'roleplay' Portugal. Their maritime expansion in Africa and Asia was driven by forts, trade posts, alliances with local powers and conquering key cities. In EU4 trade posts is a thing that only Merchant Republics can build and the natural conclusion of the mostly empty African coasts is that you want to literally encircle the south atlantic, rather than to fight over strategic natural harbors. If you don't colonize it all then others will. And it won't take very long either. Contrast that with the european presence in the region prior to the 1800s and it's a bit absurd.

The barrier to entry to large scale colonialism, either imperial conquest like the British conquest of India towards the end of the era or the Spanish conquest of New Spain, or settler colonialism like the British in North America, needs to be drastically raised and "port and fort" colonies should be the default. Colonialism should flow naturally from trade, not the other way around (having to conquer entire nodes to affect trade in an area is dumb.)

 

[Blindbohemian]

What I really wish for is some sort of overhaul for colonial mechanics. Aside from the fact that it's been the same since forever, one of my frustrations in EU4 is that I can't really 'roleplay' Portugal. Their maritime expansion in Africa and Asia was driven by forts, trade posts, alliances with local powers and conquering key cities. In EU4 trade posts is a thing that only Merchant Republics can build and the natural conclusion of the mostly empty African coasts is that you want to literally encircle the south atlantic, rather than to fight over strategic natural harbors. If you don't colonize it all then others will. And it won't take very long either. Contrast that with the european presence in the region prior to the 1800s and it's a bit absurd.

Yes. I think a huge number of the complaints and suggestions in this thread boil down to “EUV needs to capture costs as well as benefits”. Forts on the West African coast were a drain on the treasury and manpower of their owners; the death rate in English forts was something like 50% per year. But they were necessary to enable the slave trade. EUIV doesn’t really work on net benefits, so issues like that aren’t accurately modelled: in EUIV more West African forts are just more good, whereas in reality you met the minimum you needed to enable your merchants and then stopped pouring men and money into them and moved on.

Some mechanic for a “trade fort” layered on top of provinces, I think, would be the best solution. Tiny provinces like the ones along the coast of India kind of work, but distort diplomacy; if there was a mechanism for a colonising power to acquire a “treaty port” that shows up as a circle on the province (and can generate tension if it’s garrisoned/fortified) that would be an ideal solution, and would generalise nicely to merchant republics establishing trading ports in the Levant etc.

 

[Jernau_]

The main reasons people want some form of pops is to 1) represent minority cultures and religions 2) make "dev" a bit more granular and less gamey 3) put some teeth in colonial mechanics such that Portugal can't colonize the entirety of America. There may be other ways to represent that, but in general that's why people like pops.

Some people might want that but do they really know what it means? Pops in paradox games means annoying micromanagement and performance problems with little or no "fun" to show for it. While "Dev" isnt perfect I much prefer it to a pop system, and I really hope EU5 stays far away from pops.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Some people might want that but do they really know what it means? Pops in paradox games means annoying micromanagement and performance problems with little or no "fun" to show for it. While "Dev" isnt perfect I much prefer it to a pop system, and I really hope EU5 stays far away from pops.

I agree. I think pops are the biggest “you think you you want it but you don’t” mechanic in the Paradox community repertoire. I don’t see any benefit to them anywhere except in Victoria (and even there it’s deeply questionable).

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

Some people might want that but do they really know what it means? Pops in paradox games means annoying micromanagement and performance problems with little or no "fun" to show for it. While "Dev" isnt perfect I much prefer it to a pop system, and I really hope EU5 stays far away from pops.

I thoroughly disagree. Pops are the difference between an immersive system where you rule something resembling a real nation and a system that is just a list of green and red numbers representing abstract concepts. Immersion is key to fun in game like this, having physicalized people adds a ton of immersion. If it results in annoying micromanagment then you did something wrong with some mechanic, just like you could create an annoying mechanic in dev based system because manual deving is absolutely "annoying micromanagment".

The game needs a system that simulates base value of a province and then mechanics that govern its growth and decline. The way its now, separating the value into three parts connected to three mana pools, is generally disliked and for a good reason. OK, but what alternative form of "dev" is there? Expanding the provinces with gold? Keeping it constant? Meh. Letting them passively expand with variable rate? Might as well go with pops, because thats precisely what pops are for.

Best way to determine this base value of province would be to have pops as Absolute numbers and then development as modifiers.

 

[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".

 

[necro84]

Some people might want that but do they really know what it means? Pops in paradox games means annoying micromanagement and performance problems with little or no "fun" to show for it. While "Dev" isnt perfect I much prefer it to a pop system, and I really hope EU5 stays far away from pops.

I would like to have some kind of population in EU5. Looking at history some cities were growing fast but some where shrinking

Historical urban community sizes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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


Changing concentrate development into some kind of population movement between provinces could be nice.

 

[Workiwork]

I would like to have some kind of population in EU5. Looking at history some cities were growing fast but some where shrinking

Historical urban community sizes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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


Changing concentrate development into some kind of population movement between provinces could be nice.

not that i disagree or would personally have a problem with it but i would bet that a lot of people would absolutely hate it if their nation/cities would lose pops so another nation win some. it is all fun and games as long as only the AI loses.

Same with stable realms. people want more, dangerous revolts, sure. but in the end they want to be able to defend against it and want to see the ottomans crumble. and after that they will complain that the AI is stupid (maybe not the same people, but it's a no win scenario either way)

 

[grommile]

and after that they will complain that the AI is stupid (maybe not the same people, but it's a no win scenario either way)

It will, in fact, be the same people.

They want to throw "the AI is playing the same game as me" on the bonfire.

 

[humb]

Maybe. This seems needlessly deterministic, to me. I think work on other mechanics could make natural borders emerge as it were naturally:

• if non-accepted cultures actually meant something (e.g non accepted cultures should never lose separatism),
• if separatism meant that autonomy trends strongly upwards and has to be counterbalanced, and that peace treaties can include a demand that X culture or X religion be granted a chunk of autonomy,
• if autonomy trended toward an equilibrium instead of zero,
• if autonomy was affected by terrain (mountains are impossible to make not-at-all-autonomous in 1444–1821) and adjacency to autonomy was impactful (you might police your heartland real good but you can’t stop those damn brigands coming out of high-autonomy border areas to raid your rich lowlands),
• if the autonomy equilibrium point (and deterioration/increase) was affected by distance and distance was modified by terrain (Lhasa should count as further from Kathmandu than Comorin),
• if autonomy trending up was fairly normal and something you have to conscientiously resist by stationing troops and building forts in distant territories, so that maintaining distant, hostile-terrain territory has a significant cost and imposes a meaningful cost in wartime (trade control over my Iraqi fringe territories for victory in my war in Khwarazm?),
• if autonomy, once granted, is very hard to rescind (e.g 100% autonomy should be a daimyo-like vassal that can defend its autonomy and even independence by external diplomacy and force of arms)…

…if mechanical tweaks like that were implemented I think “natural borders” would swiftly become an actual (but not impossible to overcome) concern for many players. If the AI could be taught to understand that mountain, forest and river frontiers are more defensible than alternatives, it could understand the same thing. I don’t know that we need specific natural-border mechanics to achieve that goal.

Edit: similar considerations could be added to maintaining occupations. If occupying territory cost—as it does and always has—a significant fraction of the wealth and manpower that it took to capture that territory, total wars as we see in EUIV would go away entirely. We don’t need special mechanics to do that, we just need to make it untenable for the real-life reasons it was untenable: because you needed too many resources spread ever more thin to maintain control; because the people didn’t want to be occupied; because keeping control of difficult terrain is almost impossible, and so on.

You might (if you dont now already) want to look into the MEIOU&Taxes Mod, where most of the topics you mentioned are included. Specifically lots of factors influencing autonomy.

 

[I like wars and maps]

You might (if you dont now already) want to look into the MEIOU&Taxes Mod, where most of the topics you mentioned are included. Specifically lots of factors influencing autonomy.

But only look cause nobody ever plays that game due to it still processing the first 2 months of 1444

 

[Qantrix]

I really hope that the national ideas and missions will be ported to a future version of EU5. Especially the recently added missions in Lions of the North really turn playing an individual country into a unique experience, add roleplay value/immersion and inform players about history. I also like the system of changing and evolving mechanics during the game (estates - colonialism - absolutism - revolution). A game that spreads across such a timescale needs such evolving mechanics.

As a general advice (but something that I think developers are well-aware of) is that different play-styles should be carefully balanced, with one playstyle not being the only way to go. Another commenter used the example of absolutism which is good and this works on so many levels. Not having everyone choose the same idea groups, religious conversion vs humanist tolerance, or diplomacy vs espionage, the latter could be made stronger by being able to influence other country's decision-making and giving more military advantages. Again this would also benefit how unique the experience of playing a nation is because if the choices between idea groups are more marginal you have to think more about what would give your country the edge.