What gameplay mechanics to prevent late game boredom/ avoiding just being a map-painting exercise of whole world?

[ray243]

I am looking around the various dev diaries, and having various issue with a lot of PDX games when it comes to late stage gameplay, there is often not a lot you can do other than just keep expanding your empire until you painted the entire map in your colours.

Is there going to be meaningful mechanics to ensure your huge empires requires active work and challenges to last beyond a few generation? How do you prevent the snowballing effects in gameplay? What sort of challenge is there to a player who already build a rich and huge empire? Would some crisis result in the risk of the entire empire declining in fortune and potentially all falling to pieces?

 

[Quizok]

One thing is communication effectiveness. If you ever played Meiou and Taxes, you will be familiar with it. Basically, each location further away from capital get progressively less communication with your capital, lowering incrementally all the yields of that locations.

It means that you can expand, but after a certain distance from capital, your control of the new lands will be zero or whatever low cap it has, meaning you get no tax, no manpower or so little that makes the new lands not worth the effort. Thats one way of stopping endless expansion.

Also combine that with real pops, that when you go to war, you send those pops to die, thus weakening your economy for each pop that doesnt come back home, makes fighting wars was more expensive and we need to decide well where and when we want to expand.

Even late game when you have a standing army, wars will kill peasants/civilians as armies siege locations, so it may not be worth risking harming our thriving economy by going to war for some far away lands we will not be able to tame.

edit: no sure what to say about the boredom part lol. I hope there will be things to do, especially late game. From what I can see so far, many more aspects of the game will be interactive/active parts of the game, compared to how they were in EU4

 

[Gurtannon]

Better AI

 

[Obeliskkai]

How about a system whereby at the end of each age you have to change into a new country and all your development is flattened out again except for your main city?

 

[Thrudgelmir2333]

Once the 1750 year mark arrives, an endgame crisis triggers and the Polar Bear Cooperative led by his Furness, Johan Bitealot, invades Europe.

 

[Portoop]

For example; Whenever a ruler changes, a crisis may arise in the country, such as throne fights, disintegration of the state, and civil war. In large empires, if the deceased king has many children, the empire is divided (like the Mongol empire), that is, if there is a crisis in the country even when it is very powerful, the player will not be bored until the end of the game to both become stronger and maintain the existing power, just like in real life.

 

[Obeliskkai]

I think the likeliest option is Revolutions. They will hopefully be more potent than in EU4 and actually pose a challenge to the player.

 

[Azgabeth]

Well it will likely have the same issues as Vicky2 wich is generally not considered a map painter

The bigger your empire the more unaccepted pops you’ll have the more un satisfaction and lack of control the greater the risk is in war.

 

[Kotyk-durkotyk]

Well it will likely have the same issues as Vicky2 wich is generally not considered a map painter

The bigger your empire the more unaccepted pops you’ll have the more un satisfaction and lack of control the greater the risk is in war.

I think that in the late game starting from the Age of Absolutism, when political nations were formed, pops of non-accepted cultures (maybe outside the primary culture groups) should get additional separatism penalty.

For example, if it will be slowly increasing +0.01 separatism monthly, in 200 years it will be +24 separatism penalty. Exact numbers do not matter now and can be balanced, for example +0.005 montly.
For reference, we know that non-integrated provinces get +50 separatism, integrated non-cores have +10 separatism penalties.

Then this is a matter of дфеу пфьу flavour content how some nations could handle this, some policies, compromises, historical decisions, societal values etc.

 

[zeruosi]

How about a system whereby at the end of each age you have to change into a new country and all your development is flattened out again except for your main city?

Stupid Civilization 7

 

[GeneralNoob]

I think the likeliest option is Revolutions. They will hopefully be more potent than in EU4 and actually pose a challenge to the player.

Do we know the end date? Afaik the game ends around late 18th century. Revolutions are not really a thing at that point in time. The French Revolution is close to happen.

 

[zeruosi]

For example; Whenever a ruler changes, a crisis may arise in the country, such as throne fights, disintegration of the state, and civil war. In large empires, if the deceased king has many children, the empire is divided (like the Mongol empire), that is, if there is a crisis in the country even when it is very powerful, the player will not be bored until the end of the game to both become stronger and maintain the existing power, just like in real life.

But both the Ottoman Empire and China were able to achieve stable succession in the context of very large empires, and it is not in line with history to easily split and engage in civil wars. Not all large empires were Incas

 

[Kotyk-durkotyk]

Do we know the end date? Afaik the game ends around late 18th century. Revolutions are not really a thing at that point in time. The French Revolution is close to happen.

1337 – 1837

 

[GeneralNoob]

1337 – 1837

Well then we can effectively talk about the french revolution. Not revolutions in general. Revolutionary ideas spread over time and not instantly. 1840+ is really the years, revolutions pop around Europe and more. You could take Spain as an example, but that is more because of their mainland war with France.

 

[Obeliskkai]

Do we know the end date? Afaik the game ends around late 18th century. Revolutions are not really a thing at that point in time. The French Revolution is close to happen.

Johan says the game has about 500 years of gameplay.

Since the game begins in 1337, I am operating under the assumption the game ends in either 1821 or 1836, as natural break-points and handovers to the Victorian era and Victoria 3 (I favour 1836 myself).

I don't think you need to fixate on the revolutions breaking out at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th century as they did in reality either as potentially locking the feature away till too close to the end of the game. In EU4 the Revolution could occur at any point in the Age of Revolution, so hypothetically if the EU5 Age of Revolution lasts from 1700-1836 I imagine the Revolution could break out at any point, such as 1701.

 

[GeneralNoob]

I feel like good game design would keep the game interesting. As in (example): you constantly get new rivals. E.g. you start as the Ottomans. Your initial rivals are Bulgaria/Byzantine/Serbia/Beyliks, then Mamluks/Timur, followed by Russia/Italian states, leading to Russia/Austria/Spain.

In Annebar a vacuum is filled fast by a new expanding power. If EU5 works smart, every power vacuum you create is filled with a nation blobbing into it. So you dont end up in a situation where you outblob everything (unless you deliberately focus on doing so).

Some events and warfare changes could also spice things up. For the Ottomans it could potentially be the janissary taking over (if managed poorly) so new opportunities arise for the Ottoman player but also Ottoman foes. Some warfare changes chould change the dynamics. Maybe certain techs allow for huge military advantageous, so suddenly a nation you didnt seem a danger, is potentially threatening your existence (kinda what happened with Sweden and Russia or Sweden and Poland). There are also obvious historic events, such as the plague, the italian wars (interesting to everyone around Italy), the 30 years war (interesting for all of Europe), the Great Turkish Wars (should not be harcoded, but could happen naturally), the french revolution of course (massively buffing manpower reserves, army moral and stuff like unit cap) or the colonial collapse (e.g. Spain).

Idk how trade will work out, but the devs could intertwine it. E.g. Portugal blocking the indian ocean is a disaster to the Mamluks that could bankrupt them. The Ottomans reopening it should give them a massive cash flow towards their market. They would have an active interest in keeping it Euro free.

There is also the mini ice age the world faced around the 18th century, which massively impacted rural economics and population. Something that is often forgotten. It can be a disaster like the plague and the player would have to figure out how to deal with it.

 

[GeneralNoob]

Johan says the game has about 500 years of gameplay.

Since the game begins in 1337, I am operating under the assumption the game ends in either 1821 or 1836, as natural break-points and handovers to the Victorian era and Victoria 3 (I favour 1836 myself).

I don't think you need to fixate on the revolutions breaking out at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th century either as potentially locking the feature away till the end of the game. In EU4 the Revolution could occur at any point in the Age of Revolution, so hypothetically if the EU5 Age of Revolution lasts from 1700-1836 I imagine the Revolution could break out at any point, such as 1701.

1700 is way too early for revolutions and auto enabling it everywhere would just be weird and ahistorical. Especially in the Ottoman realm. Revolutionary ideas grew parallel to the tanizmat reforms and there was a real chance for the reforms to turn the Ottoman Empire to a constitutional, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnical and multi-religious monarchy. You pretty much disable that if it becomes a random thing.


Historically speaking few revolutions were successful to begin with. Usually they got crushed if there was no foreign interfierence. If you take Spain away for obvious reasons the list is pretty much red, unless foreign interfierence is involved:

List of revolutions and rebellions - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So how would you implement this? Random revolts poping up becoming their own nation instantly? Making it to an international situation every time a revolution happens so other nations can get involved in it?

 

[Obeliskkai]

1700 is way too early for revolutions and auto enabling it everywhere would just be weird and ahistorical. Especially in the Ottoman realm. Revolutionary ideas grew parallel to the tanizmat reforms and there was a real chance for the reforms to turn the Ottoman Empire to a constitutional, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnical and multi-religious monarchy. You pretty much disable that if it becomes a random thing.


Historically speaking few revolutions were successful to begin with. Usually they got crushed if there was no foreign interfierence. If you take Spain away for obvious reasons the list is pretty much red, unless foreign interfierence is involved:

List of revolutions and rebellions - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So how would you implement this? Random revolts poping up becoming their own nation instantly? Making it to an international situation every time a revolution happens so other nations can get involved in it?

Thing is, a game that starts in 1337 is not going to be historical by 1700 in any way shape or form, the butterfly effect will already be rampant to the point that you can't make a one to one analogy. The Revolution will have to occur earlier in most games simply to allow players to properly engage with it, think of it as the necessary compromise the simulation has to make with gameplay.

Revolutions I suspect are going to be a gameplay mechanic, able to emerge once the Age of Revolutions is under way with a set of criteria that will determine whether they will trigger. The criteria will have to be designed that the Revolution can spawn anywhere and pose a credible threat to the player at the end game. Likely they will probably need to emerge in either the most powerful nation in the world at that point or the second most (if you've achieved dominance). Revolutionary states should also achieve massive bonuses to their military and the ability to spread the revolution, converting other states in a snowball effect. The downside should be unrelenting hostility from non-revolutionary states.

In other words, something similar in principle to what EU4 had but the nuts and bolts of the design are yet to be revealed. But the Revolutions are the obvious candidate to shake up the late game, the only possible equivalent to a Stellaris crisis.

 

[Azgabeth]

I think that in the late game starting from the Age of Absolutism, when political nations were formed, pops of non-accepted cultures (maybe outside the primary culture groups) should get additional separatism penalty.

For example, if it will be slowly increasing +0.01 separatism monthly, in 200 years it will be +24 separatism penalty. Exact numbers do not matter now and can be balanced, for example +0.005 montly.
For reference, we know that non-integrated provinces get +50 separatism, integrated non-cores have +10 separatism penalties.

Then this is a matter of flavour content how some nations could handle this, some policies, compromises, historical decisions, societal values etc.

I would agree in principle BUT

I would personally argue it is in the age of revolution where this should happen,

More specifically i am of the opinion “nationalism” should spawn as an institution and give boosts to accepted pops but cause huge separatism and dissatisfaction in unaccepted pops.

 

[GeneralNoob]

Thing is, a game that starts in 1337 is not going to be historical by 1700 in any way shape or form, the butterfly effect will already be rampant to the point that you can't make a one to one analogy.

The problem is that you have the 30 year war, the Deluge and a potential Great Turkish Wars squieezed in right before that. Not to mention the f+ck ton of other long lasting conflicts and wars (Anglo-French 2nd hundred years war kicking off). If you start the revolution on top of it, you are going to break a lot of nations.

In other words, something similar in principle to what EU4 had but the nuts and bolts of the design are yet to be revealed. But the Revolutions are the obvious candidate to shake up the late game, the only possible equivalent to a Stellaris crisis.

I was talking about revolutions, not the french revolution in particular. The french revolution is an obvious contender.

The Revolution will have to occur earlier in most games simply to allow players to properly engage with it, think of it as the necessary compromise the simulation has to make with gameplay.

Pulling the revolution a 100 years ahead means that you have even less going on towards the end. How long do you think a revolutionary country can entertaine? Best case 50 years. What are you going to do the remaining 80 years?