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?

 

[Jarvin]

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.

Is it just me or did you self-contradict, by first praising the missions and then stating that 'different playstyles should be balanced with one playstyle not being the only way to go'. Don't missions precisely encourage a very specific & linear way to play each nation?

 

[I like wars and maps]

Is it just me or did you self-contradict, by first praising the missions and then stating that 'different playstyles should be balanced with one playstyle not being the only way to go'. Don't missions precisely encourage a very specific & linear way to play each nation?

Nobody plays a mission more then once so it gives the illusion of a different playstyle.

 

[brifbates]

Personally, I liked how missions worked in the earlier versions of the series where they were much more "game goals" with victory points than "short term, get your uber buff".

 

[Blindbohemian]

Personally, I liked how missions worked in the earlier versions of the series where they were much more "game goals" with victory points than "short term, get your uber buff".

Yes. Even within EUIV they have transitioned from “do this small thing, get a small boon or very occasionally a claim on one province or a subjugation casus belli” into possibly the single biggest controllable source of player power.

 

[brifbates]

Yes. Even within EUIV they have transitioned from “do this small thing, get a small boon or very occasionally a claim on one province or a subjugation casus belli” into possibly the single biggest controllable source of player power.

I meant more the really early ones more than the later EU 3/ early EU IV. Stuff like "Keep Ottomans out of eastern Europe" and the reward was literally game score...

 

[Blindbohemian]

I meant more the really early ones more than the later EU 3/ early EU IV. Stuff like "Keep Ottomans out of eastern Europe" and the reward was literally game score...

Ah, I’m not familiar. I can see how that’s a good idea as a sort of direction to the player. I liked the old style generated-from-your-situation, EU3/most-of-EUIV/now-agendas missions, though.

 

[Bulbhead]

History is full of interesting stories where European and other powers tried to influence foreign nations (and sometimes far away) in order to gain economic benefits - colonial powers tried to establish trade rights and outpost in Asia for instance which was vastly different from conquering chunks of land there. It was often a mix of diplomatic, religious (missionary) and military power play and I would love to see some kind of influence system where you can gain influence on foreign nations by spending ressources (like maintaining an army without actually going to full scale war) and time on this. The aim would be to establish some kind of mechanism where you can expand the influence of your nation without actually having to conquer provinces, Asian tributary states are an interesting concept but I'd like to see it expanded to the rest of the world - like trade companies that are able to establish trade rights/monopolies and eventually gain political influence over time.

Second, what is currently not really reflected is the need to access certain ressources either through trade or military actions. Think Japan and how they needed to import animal fur/skin from the Ayutthaya kingdom in the early 17th century which enabled the Europeans to gain influence. Other nations would need to import grain or iron ore in order to have their economy flourish and there would be some real kind of incentive to keep those ressource flows working.

Third, the spread of diseases could be more transparent and seemingly less random - like another map mode where you can see how they spread similar to religions. Also it would be great if players could at least try to do something about the spread of diseases, like spending ressources on healthcare research and sanitary systems. I feel that the influence of diseases is underrepresented in EU4, but it should not feel like some seemingly random kind of set of events.

 

[Jernau_]

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".

While you could ignore it the pop management in Imperator was just annoying micromanagement. That has been true for Stellaris too for most of the patches. And pops seem to be one of the main causes of performance issues in Stellaris.

 

[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

 

[Cagallo]

Seeing Johan so active in EU5 threads is hinting at something
Edit: one doesn't need to be Nostradamus to know that brainwork is being put on a V version.

 

[Kovax]

I've only started playing this game since last week, after downloading from GOG. I've already got several strong opinions about what it did right and wrong. Plainly obvious is the excessive railroading due to Missions. Also obvious is that logistics are barely represented, so armies of 20K-30K men can cross a continent with barely any attrition (losses easily replaced on the fly), to fight an opponent a quarter of the way around the world in 1450. That's blatantly absurd, given the limitations of the period.

For example, in my current (first and only) campaign, the Ottos sent an army of 28K men up through the Balkans, through parts of Hungary, Aquileia, and Austria, to attack Venice in the first couple of decades of the game, and arrived only a few dozen men short of full strength. Power projection with large amies should be insanely difficult, subject to high attrition, and costly to supply.

 

[WorldWarIV]

I wouldn't want the Burgundian Succession Crisis to be an event; I would want a system that would trigger events like the BSC when certain conditions are met, meaning that it could happen to any European power with the right set of circumstances. Same thing for the Iberian wedding and other major dynastic events. I would also like a much more detailed, dynamic and transparent dynastic system that would allow to play the game of thrones extensively if one would wish to do so.

 

[arosenberger14]

Third, the spread of diseases could be more transparent and seemingly less random - like another map mode where you can see how they spread similar to religions. Also it would be great if players could at least try to do something about the spread of diseases, like spending ressources on healthcare research and sanitary systems. I feel that the influence of diseases is underrepresented in EU4, but it should not feel like some seemingly random kind of set of events.

Disease is another thing I'd absolutely love to see implemented in EU5. It had such a massive impact on the world in this timeframe that you really can't explain history without taking it into account. The most dramatic effect of course is the impact that Eurasian diseases had on the native Americans when it wiped out at least half their population in both sudden sharp shocks and a centuries long disease burden on the survivors. Sub-saharan Africa is another big case, where the local diseases prevented serious European incursion and also hampered local use of horses and livestock amongst the natives. Less well known but also of great importance were the tropical diseases which made Caribbean and Mediterranean plantation islands literal deathtraps for Europeans (when Napoleon tried to reconquer Haiti 20,000 of his troops died from malaria in a year) and helped drive the mass importation of african slaves and their eventual demographic dominance of the Caribbean. And then there's urban diseases which helped turn cities into population sinks that constantly required an inflow of people from the countryside to even maintain their population. Just like how provinces have terrain characteristics that affect economic growth and warfare, they should also have "disease characteristics" that impact both.

Looping back to the Native Americans for a moment, I think contact with Eurasians for them should be something akin to dealing with an endgame crisis in Stellaris. You should get hit with a disaster just for having Eurasians nearby that ravages your development levels with pandemics and triggers a bunch of unrest. There should be some mechanic for the European conquistadors to side with rebels in larger states and co-opt them to take them over as the spanish did historically with the Aztec and Incan empires. Playing a big native empire would be a super high-risk high-reward strategy where you'll have a hell of a time surviving contact with colonizers, but if you manage to do so you'd be well positioned to dominate the Americas. Alternately you could stay small and try to retreat to the interior until the contact disaster ends (similar to the historical North American natives), but then have to build up from a smaller power base against more entrenched European colonizers. It'd be a very unique and very challenging game to play, similar to how surviving as Byzantium or Albania is right now, and would also much better represent the apocalyptic experience that contact with Europe was for native peoples.

 

[x8ight]

You refering to moving slaves around?

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

Okay, this is going to sound counter intuitive, but everyone in our Imperator MP community enjoys the manual movement of pops. I actually created some of these toggles and such in our MP mod to help automate pop movement and distribution after one member complained of tedium, but these tools have gone completely unused in lieu of manual input. At a surface level - we play without pausing - pop movement is something to do while passing the time in a multi-hour session, but looking more deeply, some of these micromanagement mechanics help create an intimate connection between the player, their nation, and the map.

 

[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?

 

[holyvigil]

More flavor text. I love reading history and have played every country with any flavor event. Learning history is the most exciting thing about EU4.

No WC achievements and no building mechanics around making it possible. It's not realistic and the mechanics produce strange outcomes in the game.

 

[necro84]

Did it decline much though before the Russian conquest?

I'm not sure how much but it declined after Bukhara became the capital. The 1750s are called the revival of the city and for revival there must be some decline first. I think in-game I would change it to about 15 development in 1700 - still existing but not as big and strong as before.

There is more data on European cities so there we can see like Lübeck, Danzig, Seville started losing population in 1600s. At the same time cities like Amsterdam were growing fast so there can be some population movement mechanics in EU5. Antwerp is another example - 105k in 1568, 47k in 1600.

Historical urban community sizes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[vaLor-]

No natural choice would be Spain cause they are bigger and in the same position. Even better choice would be France where you just kill Portugal, Spain and England. Using such arguments we can say the perfect country to reestablish the Byzantine Empire is the Ottomans too since they got a better position. Flavor and specilization is important espacially in such a game as EU4 with hundreds of tags of wich most follow the exact same geopolitical goals. If it wasnt for national ideas we might aswell remove half of the tags since they just do the same thing.

Agree, I think the debate arising from the very vocal group which advocates for abolishing tag-specifc or region-specific mechanics is perhaps unaware of the fact of history that unlikely things have and do happen. The HRE as we know it would not have occured anywhere in the world besides the region that it did, just as the iroquois confederation or the mandate of heaven would not have. Tags, while not as markedly distinct, often display this law as well.

There is no baseline framework in which you can shoehorn all the governments which arose disparately around the world.

 

[vaLor-]

Did it decline much though before the Russian conquest?

Yes, the city was assaulted by Persian forces in the early 1700s, which caused the city to be completely abandoned by the Bukharans. Prior to then though, it was still quite a prosperous city, perhaps in decline since the days of Timur, but still great.

 

[grommile]

Agree, I think the debate arising from the very vocal group which advocates for abolishing tag-specifc or region-specific mechanics is perhaps unaware of the fact of history that unlikely things have and do happen.

I'm perfectly aware of that.

I like the region-specific mechanics of the HRE as a design concept (even though I want absolutely nothing to do with the HRE because I find the mechanics-as-they-are less appealing than talking to British public sector IT departments – and I expect to get paid to talk to British public sector IT departments), and I'm in favour of relying on events to handle special early-game goings on like the Burgundian Inheritance.

But I want the bulk of the special effects currently locked to single tags to be moved into cultures (CK3 shows the way here!), religions, estate privileges, government reforms (that other countries meeting suitable situational conditions can adopt), initially-chosen idea groups, and other such attributes (whether mutable or immutable) of the country.

And yes, that does mean I want Mission Trees to mostly stop giving rewards and be reduced to just a playbook for the AI and an inspiration for the player – replace "you are Playing Badly if you don't play this country this way" with "here is what we think is a fun way to play this country and a good way for the AI to be programmed to play this country, but don't let that get in the way of doing what you want".