So, the Mamluks were despised not for their slavery, but for the bad behavior of some of them? Interesting point.
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I think this debate needs to stop and we can't let this unrelated topic continue to dominate the posts
I'm sorry, I didn't expect many of them to come and discuss topics related to eunuchs when I sought information from them.This has caused you a certain amount of information bombardment.
This might be it although it would be a shit show to play through.
I was thinking about something else, after a certain point, the player is forced to create an international organization (like HRE) if they want to conquer more land. Player can be incentivized to do this by giving rewards like 0 unrest within IO, special interactions with the subjects within IO like 10 years of +50% vassal income and stuff like that.
So instead of complete disintegration, the game can emulate what really happens inside these large empires (i.e. division of power across loyalists that may or may not turn on you at some point.) with special type of IOs near end game.
Ideally these sorts of "late-game disaster" should be the consequences of your actions built up over centuries.
Like, let's say you come out of the Black Death with a newly empowered peasantry that manages to win a whole bunch of land rights that give them a lot of control over their land, but this consequently reduces the income (and satisfaction) of your nobility. You compensate with tax breaks for the nobility and make up the budget deficit with much more taxation against the peasantry.
Do that for a century or two, and now your peasantry is broke, bankrupt, landless (since they had to sell all their land to cover their debts), and having to work as sharecroppers just to do something that can keep them alive. Let that stew for another century, and you have the French Revolution.
What if you didn't side with the nobility, and keep your peasantry going as happy, relatively tax-free, and not beholden to landlords? Aside from your upset nobility, you might find your own state income significantly curtailed; one of the things often reflected in research over early modern economics is that these sorts of agricultural workers primarily start to innovate in the face of competition. A peasantry of sustenance farmers isn't gonna naturally channel into higher modes of agricultural production, and depending on their political power, the necessary "nudges" might become too politically unpalatable. Consequently, your country suffers from considerable stagnation while your nobility and burghers likely try to find ways around the empowered peasantry to build up their own wealth base.
The long-term consequences of your decisions should be what ultimately nudge you towards later-game disaster (especially in the face of the spread of institutions), and it might not necessarily be possible to avoid this. Or at least, the necessarily political actions that you might need to take to do so could instigate civil war. Or they could weaken you against external foes, leaving you open for conquest. Or many other such roadblocks that only encourage you to push out reform until well after it being too late.
The late game of Project Caesar should be exactly when your chickens come home to roost.
Like, let's say you come out of the Black Death with a newly empowered peasantry that manages to win a whole bunch of land rights that give them a lot of control over their land, but this consequently reduces the income (and satisfaction) of your nobility. You compensate with tax breaks for the nobility and make up the budget deficit with much more taxation against the peasantry.
Do that for a century or two, and now your peasantry is broke, bankrupt, landless (since they had to sell all their land to cover their debts), and having to work as sharecroppers just to do something that can keep them alive. Let that stew for another century, and you have the French Revolution.
What if you didn't side with the nobility, and keep your peasantry going as happy, relatively tax-free, and not beholden to landlords? Aside from your upset nobility, you might find your own state income significantly curtailed; one of the things often reflected in research over early modern economics is that these sorts of agricultural workers primarily start to innovate in the face of competition. A peasantry of sustenance farmers isn't gonna naturally channel into higher modes of agricultural production, and depending on their political power, the necessary "nudges" might become too politically unpalatable. Consequently, your country suffers from considerable stagnation while your nobility and burghers likely try to find ways around the empowered peasantry to build up their own wealth base.
The long-term consequences of your decisions should be what ultimately nudge you towards later-game disaster (especially in the face of the spread of institutions), and it might not necessarily be possible to avoid this. Or at least, the necessarily political actions that you might need to take to do so could instigate civil war. Or they could weaken you against external foes, leaving you open for conquest. Or many other such roadblocks that only encourage you to push out reform until well after it being too late.
The late game of Project Caesar should be exactly when your chickens come home to roost.
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I'll put it another way: my idea for how the game should work is risk and reward. Not just immediate risk, but long-term risk.
Do you take an economic policy that empowers your nobility to boost your military knowing full-well that the long-term consequences of that economic policy will ultimately lead to civil war, gambling on having a good-enough leader with enough political clout down the line to be able to undo that economic policy before it ultimately destroys you?
That's the sort of decision-making I want to see in the game. End-game disasters should reflect the ultimate outcome of those risks you took, should you fail to win the gamble of having your cake and eating it, too.
Do you take an economic policy that empowers your nobility to boost your military knowing full-well that the long-term consequences of that economic policy will ultimately lead to civil war, gambling on having a good-enough leader with enough political clout down the line to be able to undo that economic policy before it ultimately destroys you?
That's the sort of decision-making I want to see in the game. End-game disasters should reflect the ultimate outcome of those risks you took, should you fail to win the gamble of having your cake and eating it, too.
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Paradox has done playing wide and playing tall pretty well, but I think what they need to revamp is decentralized gameplay, and diplomacy.
Generally you only bother with diplomacy if you play Austria. You marry nations to snipe personal unions, and you pass reforms for the HRE so you can eventually annex it (/turn it into a giant vassal swarm). Direct expansion tends to be pretty rare because generally all the land around you can be annexed diplomatically, or is punished from expansionism because of the HRE mechanics.
But no other country really plays this way, or gives you any reason to. Theoretically China could operate like this with the Mandate of Heaven system. The problem in EUIV was A. Ming pretty much had every neighbor on lock for tributaries anyway, b. even if a nation broke away, getting them back would be pretty hard if they were in the Philippines or south Asia, because the mechanics only did land bordering nations, so Ming's starting situation is supercharged, and critically c. tributaries are useless cause you can't do anything with them. This is a big one I think they need to change- one of the last reforms Ming had was to turn tributaries into vassals, I think this should be something all nations can do- with enough diplomacy. This much more encourages diplomacy at least for those who can do tributaries, as getting tributaries is easy, getting vassals is difficult. This also gives Ming/China a good way to expand- have Korea as your tributary, invest in them, get a vassal, and now you have a high-tech rich little today vassal to help your coffers and help in wars.
Of course that's just one country again. I think reforming tributaries would help though with Horde-tech, Asian-tech, and Polynesian-tech (assuming they all still get tributaries). I also hope that Federation mechanics make a return with native-councils, as I think it's quite a lot of fun maintaining an alliance network and forging it into a full country. I actually did a campaign in aboriginal australia where I formed numerous federations with the tribes leftover after the first formation, and honestly I find the idea of everyone down under banding together diplomatically a more compelling narrative than just conquering everyone like you do in every other region. Of course SOP's won't be getting mechanics on releaes, but still.
I think a big thing though is finding ways to turn alliances in to vassals, at least for smaller nations. Like Trade Leagues are pretty useless for players that want to expand. Having 'influence' in a small nation like Rhodes doesn't mean much if say for instance, Rhodes allies Byzantium and then gets called into a war with them against the Ottomans, and gets annexed, and you weren't able to join in and help cause nobody else would join in from the Trade League to start an offensive war against the Ottomans. Ergo- I think you should have the ability to invest in a trade league to try to turn the members into vassals, who still count by the way for trade-league buffs, unlike in EUIV. These don't have to be traditional vassals still, they could have some outside diplomacy. Just not enough to wriggle out of a trade league you've invested into for a hundred years, and get eaten by the Ottomans on some damn fool crusade. In essence I think that there should be a way to have a Trade League function like a mini-HRE, or like the Federation Mechanics. But they're not the only ones, I think there should be a similar system for defensive leagues.
A similar mechanic exists in Imperator Rome, where defensive leagues exist for small minor nations that can band together, and this makes sense strategically to do so. However, since there's no way to centralize this league (by the way, exactly what happened to the Leagues of Athens and Sparta) you'll get outpaced. And what typically sucks is the league members will probably be the same-culture neighbors you have, AKA prime real-estate for expansion. There's a way to try to influence league members into vassals in Imperator but it's hidden down the tech-tree. For Project Caesar I'd want defensive leagues to be formable- even possibly formed out of Coalitions, but these should have some sort of elected head to them that has the power to coax members into more centralized affairs that strengthen the defensive league, and the leaders hold over the members. Of course, this should be a mechanic that's limited to certain power rankings- like doesn't make sense for say the lowland nations to join the UK against France, and let the British Empire just choose to piecemeal annex them. I don't know if nation ranks (duchy, kingdom, empire) will make a return in Project Caesar, but this mechanic should be tied to a similar ranking (as it is in Imperator).
Generally you only bother with diplomacy if you play Austria. You marry nations to snipe personal unions, and you pass reforms for the HRE so you can eventually annex it (/turn it into a giant vassal swarm). Direct expansion tends to be pretty rare because generally all the land around you can be annexed diplomatically, or is punished from expansionism because of the HRE mechanics.
But no other country really plays this way, or gives you any reason to. Theoretically China could operate like this with the Mandate of Heaven system. The problem in EUIV was A. Ming pretty much had every neighbor on lock for tributaries anyway, b. even if a nation broke away, getting them back would be pretty hard if they were in the Philippines or south Asia, because the mechanics only did land bordering nations, so Ming's starting situation is supercharged, and critically c. tributaries are useless cause you can't do anything with them. This is a big one I think they need to change- one of the last reforms Ming had was to turn tributaries into vassals, I think this should be something all nations can do- with enough diplomacy. This much more encourages diplomacy at least for those who can do tributaries, as getting tributaries is easy, getting vassals is difficult. This also gives Ming/China a good way to expand- have Korea as your tributary, invest in them, get a vassal, and now you have a high-tech rich little today vassal to help your coffers and help in wars.
Of course that's just one country again. I think reforming tributaries would help though with Horde-tech, Asian-tech, and Polynesian-tech (assuming they all still get tributaries). I also hope that Federation mechanics make a return with native-councils, as I think it's quite a lot of fun maintaining an alliance network and forging it into a full country. I actually did a campaign in aboriginal australia where I formed numerous federations with the tribes leftover after the first formation, and honestly I find the idea of everyone down under banding together diplomatically a more compelling narrative than just conquering everyone like you do in every other region. Of course SOP's won't be getting mechanics on releaes, but still.
I think a big thing though is finding ways to turn alliances in to vassals, at least for smaller nations. Like Trade Leagues are pretty useless for players that want to expand. Having 'influence' in a small nation like Rhodes doesn't mean much if say for instance, Rhodes allies Byzantium and then gets called into a war with them against the Ottomans, and gets annexed, and you weren't able to join in and help cause nobody else would join in from the Trade League to start an offensive war against the Ottomans. Ergo- I think you should have the ability to invest in a trade league to try to turn the members into vassals, who still count by the way for trade-league buffs, unlike in EUIV. These don't have to be traditional vassals still, they could have some outside diplomacy. Just not enough to wriggle out of a trade league you've invested into for a hundred years, and get eaten by the Ottomans on some damn fool crusade. In essence I think that there should be a way to have a Trade League function like a mini-HRE, or like the Federation Mechanics. But they're not the only ones, I think there should be a similar system for defensive leagues.
A similar mechanic exists in Imperator Rome, where defensive leagues exist for small minor nations that can band together, and this makes sense strategically to do so. However, since there's no way to centralize this league (by the way, exactly what happened to the Leagues of Athens and Sparta) you'll get outpaced. And what typically sucks is the league members will probably be the same-culture neighbors you have, AKA prime real-estate for expansion. There's a way to try to influence league members into vassals in Imperator but it's hidden down the tech-tree. For Project Caesar I'd want defensive leagues to be formable- even possibly formed out of Coalitions, but these should have some sort of elected head to them that has the power to coax members into more centralized affairs that strengthen the defensive league, and the leaders hold over the members. Of course, this should be a mechanic that's limited to certain power rankings- like doesn't make sense for say the lowland nations to join the UK against France, and let the British Empire just choose to piecemeal annex them. I don't know if nation ranks (duchy, kingdom, empire) will make a return in Project Caesar, but this mechanic should be tied to a similar ranking (as it is in Imperator).
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I am little bit late but I don't think it is a good thing if the skills in EU4 is convertible to EU5. I think mediocre player should be able to expand little more than historical russia otherwise main fun of the game is gone away for mediocre and can only be achieved by devoting really significant time.
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Lowering the difficulty settings is always an option. If difficulty will work in similar ways as in EU4, then lowering it will probably lower the impact of things that hold you back in your map painting (control, unrest, etc.). If I didn't misread the reactions then most people like the majority of the changes that will come with this game (me included) because they can immerse themselves more in their campaign and a campaign will probably keep you engaged and entertained longer, judging by the direction the developers are taking. Maybe lowering the difficulty will make it more like EU4 with some new and extra features so everyone can be happy.