What could EU5 learn/take from recent Pdx games

[grommile]

Your life must I be a terrible burden if you never ever encoutered anything intuitive.

I don't think I ever encountered an intuitive human-created system.

I have, however, encountered a great many human-created systems that rely on simplicity, familiarity (working like another system I already know), and transparency/discoverability (showing the results of actions promptly) to create the illusion of intuitiveness.

(The pushbutton, the switch, the doorknob, the tap, etc. all have to be learned.)

 

[imperial.]

Sigma Theory is a strategy game built around running an covert operations agency. That's the whole point of the game. Nobody's going to touch the game unless that's what they're interested in. The developers don't have to concern themselves with how the presence of covert sabotage mechanics interact with the rest of the gameplay, because the covert sabotage mechanics are the gameplay.

There is one Clausewitz/Jomini engine gameline where Paradox have managed to make covert sabotage fun for people who aren't covert sabotage fans: Crusader Kings, which is a game about being a mediaeval martial aristocrat, rather than a game about being a (nation-)state.

That's totally understandable, I am aware that the games I mentioned are not the same as EU, inspiration can still be taken.

I would say regarding covertness I do see a game EU based inclusive of an Era encompassing the beginnings & duration of real Revolution, particularly in Europe & the America's, coupled with it 'being end game' as important.

Perhaps not on an individual Crusader Kings level but Surely Nation / Estate wise. Jump to Victoria 3 and all the nations are either independent of or are vassals, the scene's before needs to be addressed in a fun way, i mean 'shit does hit the fan' so to speak.

 

[Aldaron]

I appreciate the efforts from the studio to offer more historical accurate contents. Even if there is still a lot to be done in this area. As I understand the devs still rely heavily on wikipedia. Which is a shame. I think it would do a great service to the devs if the studio brought some general history manuals. You may ask directly to university teachers searchers. I am sure they would gladly answer.

I cannot speak for the teams that developed this wonderful game before us, but among the Content Design Team we have not only people with lots of historical knowledge, but one of us has a PHD in History. We are not precisely in the dark here.

Wikipedia is a great starting point for several things and it is very convenient because everything is collected in the same place. It is specially useful if you check stuff in several languages (as we do). That's not to say that it is our only source, because it is not. We do own lots of specialized books in several topics that we use for our job and we do also meet together to discuss future content so historicity is respected in a fun way, sharing our historical knowledge among us. We do also have regular contacts with university researchers.

 

[Ethanol]

That you should be sure that you can commit to maintaining and balancing a system before developing it.

National ideas are fun in principle but are not balanced and after a few years the gap between older ones and new ones becomes game-breaking. I remember a dev saying a few years back that the shear amount of NI's meant they could not spare the time to go back and balance older NI's.

It's the same problem HOI4 has with focus trees and it's hard not to see it as a significant drain on dev effort...

(The NI system is also bad because it makes nations intrinsecally better than other nations in something, irrespective of where the player/AI takes that nation to and based on appreciations of history that are flimsy at best (see Prussia)

 

[Merrivale]

Since you are active here Johan, I want to put my two cents in again (I may have already done it elsewhere but I don't think in this thread)--this isn't a take from other games at all so sorry about that.

The direction that Paradox games in general has taken with DLC's that I dislike the most is a patchwork approach to upgrading content and the map. I get why this happens, but the end result is you basically have a game that is never balanced worldwide--there's always a region somewhere that's either overpowered because these changes have just started, or underpowered because you haven't gotten to it yet. You get one area that's got an OP mission tree compared to others or another that has no map density because it hasn't gotten a pass yet.

My hope, and I know this is a hard ask particularly for EU as compared to say, HOI, is that if you decide post release that you are going to expand the map, that this is done either in one fell swoop or in much bigger chunks. If you decide you are going to add mission tree like depth, same thing. At least do continents if you cannot do the entire world.

 

[Major Malfunction]

Hitler mana = bad if made a central game mechanics. EUIV would be MUCH better off without it. It was mitigated with patches and DLCs but only to some level.
Blocked mechanics = trash. Sooner or later but almost every Paradox grand strategy got rid of them outright or replaced with soft counters - Espionage is the most prominent example.
Anti-fun developer attitude is bad. Let's punish players for blobbing, for map painting, for doomstacks etc. in other words -for things that brings player most satisfaction and fun. Instead of tweaking and adjusting mechanics, making them fun, devs for years, decades even, made them punishable.
Rebellions are mostly tedious and boring. With general rule of "one inevitable uprising after conquest" it becomes a tedium. And rebels hannot even hope to hard majors. Support rebels are almost uselss.

 

[brifbates]

Rebellions are mostly tedious and boring. With general rule of "one inevitable uprising after conquest" it becomes a tedium. And rebels hannot even hope to hard majors. Support rebels are almost uselss.

This is mostly because the devs caved to player qq about having to actually worry about revolts springing up unexpectedly and changed them from being fully random to pathetically predictable.

 

[grommile]

This is mostly because the devs caved to player qq about having to actually worry about revolts springing up unexpectedly and changed them from being fully random to pathetically predictable.

In EU3, I took the Military Modernization decision as Russia more than once.

On that basis, I feel highly qualified to say that rebels have never been interesting in EU3 or EU4, except perhaps as a way to Win Harder by screwing over the AI.

 

[Blindbohemian]

EU4 with Pops. Just give us that on release date. I wouldn't mind sending off monarch points in a viking funeral, but just incorporating pops into the core of the game would be a great start.

Oh, and don't go with that 'no more message settings' schtick the newer games have. I hate that, and so does everyone else on the forum.

Hah. I’m the opposite: I’d be happy to give them the benefit of the doubt on almost any mechanical innovation, but add pops to EU and I have no interest whatsoever.

 

[Johan]

The direction that Paradox games in general has taken with DLC's that I dislike the most is a patchwork approach to upgrading content and the map. I get why this happens, but the end result is you basically have a game that is never balanced worldwide--there's always a region somewhere that's either overpowered because these changes have just started, or underpowered because you haven't gotten to it yet. You get one area that's got an OP mission tree compared to others or another that has no map density because it hasn't gotten a pass yet.

I really don't think changing the map constantly is a good idea, partly for the reason you mention, and partly because it keeps breaking savegames for people.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Honest take here, as a player I like the idea of having a game such as EU4 with very high skill ceiling, that requires real effort to master but at the same time in an ideal world it must also have a very accessible and easy-to-comprehend tutorial around the basics.

My most favorite feature for EU4 is probably missions (and flavor in general, such as events and what not) because that's what I have spent my time the most as a modder and as a feature it only reinforced my love for the game. That's not to say that the system cannot be improved, for example I sometimes feel bad having missions being the primary factor of narration / playthrough. I feel like MTs sometimes dictate too much of the pace of the game. They sure are awesome to play with, and clicking the button after completing a mission feels great, I can even say that I love love love reading event rewards, descriptions buuuut there comes a point where I would love to see some more weight being shifted to other gameplay/narrative aspects such as reforms, estate privileges, events etc. And I feel like this is one of the contributing factors to Lions' success, the addition of new reforms etc

Thanks for posting this, @PDX Big Boss. I’m diametrically opposite in that I think mission trees are a strong contender for the single worst thing that’s ever happened to the EU series, for precisely the reason you outline (among others). They replace any need for other “narrative” or “meaning” in a playthrough and reduce it all to binary clickbuttons chained to whatever the devs imagined for a given country.

I had hoped that a learning for you guys from EUIV might have been “well, we won’t do that again”. Evidently not.

 

[I like wars and maps]

Thanks for posting this, @PDX Big Boss. I’m diametrically opposite in that I think mission trees are a strong contender for the single worst thing that’s ever happened to the EU series, for precisely the reason you outline (among others). They replace any need for other “narrative” or “meaning” in a playthrough and reduce it all to binary clickbuttons chained to whatever the devs imagined for a given country.

I had hoped that a learning for you guys from EUIV might have been “well, we won’t do that again”. Evidently not.

They wont ever dissapear sadly since they give players a quick cheap dopamin rush for very little effort required in designing them.

 

[EUnderhill]

Thanks for posting this, @PDX Big Boss. I’m diametrically opposite in that I think mission trees are a strong contender for the single worst thing that’s ever happened to the EU series, for precisely the reason you outline (among others). They replace any need for other “narrative” or “meaning” in a playthrough and reduce it all to binary clickbuttons chained to whatever the devs imagined for a given country.

I had hoped that a learning for you guys from EUIV might have been “well, we won’t do that again”. Evidently not.

There is a lot of potential to mission trees, but it requires an AI that can be guided by them to take full effect of them...too many times I have seen Spain and Portugal screw each other over in colonization for starters, even with great relations and trust.

 

[Lee Saxon]

This is mostly because the devs caved to player qq about having to actually worry about revolts springing up unexpectedly and changed them from being fully random to pathetically predictable.

I think rebellions are too preventable moreso than they're too predictable.

EU5 needs (far) less "A Comet!!1!1!" random malus idiocy you can't do a damn thing about, not more. Very little in a strategy game should be "fully random".

I do think we now get too precise an indication *when* a rebellion is coming, but we should get enough of an understanding *that* -- and *why* -- one is coming that we at least have a chance to try to do *something* to prevent it. But, yes, that *something* could be a lot more difficult to achieve than it is right now.

 

[Blindbohemian]

There is a lot of potential to mission trees, but it requires an AI that can be guided by them to take full effect of them...too many times I have seen Spain and Portugal screw each other over in colonization for starters, even with great relations and trust.

No, there isn’t. The best potential they have is “the devs might add a really fun mission tree”. That isn’t what EU ever was in the past and shouldn’t be what EU is now. It has never been a game about playing a mission tree, and it’s not a very good game about playing mission trees even with mission trees added. That the best-case scenario has gone from “there might be new fun mechanics that allow a multitude of different ways to play the same tag or different tags in the same area of the world to achieve a range of different objectives” and replaced it with “now that there are branching mission trees, the devs might add a really fun one that I can play through three times in slightly different ways” only emphasises what a disastrous and out-of-place feature they are.

The “potential” you are suggesting above could be achieved better with better AI and mechanical design. Mission trees add nothing useful to the game that couldn’t be better added in some other, better way. They are nothing but bad.

 

[Blindbohemian]

I think rebellions are too preventable moreso than they're too predictable.

EU5 needs (far) less "A Comet!!1!1!" random malus idiocy you can't do a damn thing about, not more. Very little in a strategy game should be "fully random".

I do think we now get too precise an indication *when* a rebellion is coming, but we should get enough of an understanding *that* -- and *why* -- one is coming that we at least have a chance to try to do *something* to prevent it. But, yes, that *something* could be a lot more difficult to achieve than it is right now.

I think it’s a bit of both. Rebels being predictable means they are doing a bad job at being rebels.

Rebellions should be more a matter of “do I want to risk this big war? If I lose many troops and look weak, the territory I just conquered in Khorasan might revolt…” rather than a question of waiting for them to mindlessly rise up, squishing them and going on your way. More like liberty desire (mein gott, almost as if mechanics should have intertwined generalisable functions!) with its various influences and multiple levels of effect than like a mindless tick down to predictable doom.

As with many things in EU’s design they should be bound into other mechanics to make a living world and introduce difficult, interesting choices with multiple potentially valid answers.

They should also have some function beyond generating armies to kill. Normal province/outright soldiers-in-the-streets rebellion is bizarrely bipolar and not at all how thee things worked historically. And means rebels are basically a nothing to any remotely competent player. Where are the many, many acts of resistance that aren’t taking up arms? Why do they stop (rather than increase) when you start killing people’s husbands and sons?

 

[EUnderhill]

No, there isn’t. The best potential they have is “the devs might add a really fun mission tree”. That isn’t what EU ever was in the past and shouldn’t be what EU is now. It has never been a game about playing a mission tree, and it’s not a very good game about playing mission trees even with mission trees added.

The “potential” you are suggesting above could be achieved better with better AI and mechanical design. Mission trees add nothing useful to the game that couldn’t be better added in some other, better way. They are nothing but bad.

Mission trees (and their fulfillment) can be a useful means of determining which nations podium at the end, assuming there is an AI that makes reaching the end worthwhile, without which EUV is pointless.

 

[I like wars and maps]

Mission trees (and their fulfillment) can be a useful means of determining which nations podium at the end, assuming there is an AI that makes reaching the end worthwhile, without which EUV is pointless.

But you just repeat what he said "the game would be better with better AI". Only you say missions would be better if the AI itself was better wich just isnt true. Getting claims on India after inheriting Burgundy as Austria wont suddenly be better cause the Ottoman AI is harder to beat. Malis mission tree wont stop being the most unfun thing cause of Timbutku deving its land optimally and allying everyone I neighbour. Becoming a horde as the Teutons wont stop being more fantasy then 90% things in the Anbennar mod simply cause the first war with Poland is harder due to it having a competent AI for once. You could remove the mission trees from these examples and the fun part still remains, Ottomans is harder to beat, Tumbutku is a competent enemy for Mali, Poland is genuinly difficult to take down.

 

[grommile]

Mission trees (and their fulfillment) can be a useful means of determining which nations podium at the end

The scoring system we have (yes there is one) ignores mission trees.

Paying attention to mission trees would not make the scoring system we have better.

 

[EUnderhill]

The scoring system we have (yes there is one) ignores mission trees.

Paying attention to mission trees would not make the scoring system we have better.

One improvement to the scoring system would be to also include mission trees as part of it. Deeper still, borrowing from the AWE version, the player and AI could pick beforehand which branches to emphasize (and be worth more) and the converse, and keep that hidden until the end, to keep things more interesting