What to not repeat from EUIII or other PI titles in EUIV

[Van Diemen]

First of all, I'm very happy and looking forward to EUIV. However, since this title is not really the first Paradox has made we can expect certain aspects being repeated, which might not always be an improvement for the overall gameplay experience. What feature/problem/design do you fear will be in EUIV, which you wouldn't like to see being implemented or repeated again in EUIV?

Personally, I do hope that EUIV will be a bit more conservative on the amount of random events. Personally I kind of dislike the pavement of irrelevant events that just adjust something small in that one overseas province within your 50+ province empire, which is something EUIII did, but also Victoria II does. I rather have fewer, but more significant events that really matter a lot and cannot be ignored or clicked away without giving the options some proper thought.

 

[Chamboozer]

I hope Paradox gets rid of defensive bonuses for besieging armies. It actually makes it harder for a small country to defend itself if it's in mountains, which is the opposite of what's intended.

 

[nijis]

I hope Paradox gets rid of defensive bonuses for besieging armies.

Most definitely -- in fact, I'd say that the whole Clausewitz military system needs new features, so that a 50k army can't necessarily find and wipe out a few thousand raiders/guerrillas in a province, to reflect all the problems and challenges of all the "small wars" pitting early modern empires against nomads, pirates, privateers, fugitive slaves, Marathi raiders, and other elusive foes.

I'm very excited to hear about the emphasis on trade routes, and I'm really curious to see what they have planned. Had PI not announced it already, I definitely would have put here first that I'd like to see a new look at the commerce system.

 

[Samilou]

Instead of armies retreating being allowed to choose for themselves where to retreat when defeated, a superior enemy that defeated them should be able to steer them in a particular direction at times. Or at least a small retreating unit with little morale and no hopes for victory should surrender when the pursuers catch up.

 

[Burgonde]

please change Land Warfare. MMtG had great ideas about this, but I'm sure nothing stops Paradox from developing something different with equal depth.

 

[Mike S]

EU I, EU II & Vic I were all poor, EUIII & Vic II were none existant when it came to the importance of a countries Navy, a strong army is good but the real return on investment was those who went down the Navy route, hopefully the new game will try harder to capture that part of the era

 

[Samilou]

Not to repeat from EU3: Forgetting about giving the Netherlands the proper potential and likelihood of arising as a grand commercial power and colonial power (even when AI), instead of land power.

 

[Hystarea]

Not to repeat from EU3: Forgetting about giving the Netherlands the proper potential and likelihood of arising as a grand commercial power and colonial power (even when AI), instead of land power.

Netherlands only do good in my game if they survive the invasion of Burgundy.

 

[Sensational]

Less clicking. More depth.

Oh and remove rebels. The only time you should deal with rebels through military means is if there's a major event going on like a revolution or a civil war. Wack-a-mole isn't fun, deal with it though localised event chains, sliders, anything but wack-a-mole.

Don't focus on localised systems. Rather, have and expand on the macro scale systems that can be applied anywhere, to give flavor and depth no matter what country you choose. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean, one example might be the Holy Roman Empire. Rather than having a localised system like that (I'm not asking to remove the HRE), make a union of nations like it possible anywhere, if the conditions are right. A HRE of Sikh (HSE?) nations in India that unites to fight the colonial powers perhaps. This doesn't only apply to the HRE system of course. Things like pandemics, the new trade system they've been talking about, piracy, civil wars, personal unions, technology. All of these and more are the systems I'm talking about. Historically plausible depth, as opposed to historically accurate depth.

 

[unmerged(52491)]

The snowball effect. That is the game becoming progressively easier further you play the game. These games really needs some further challenges for mid & late game. Even if you get a huge empire, maintaining it and defending it should be hard.

The new coalitions system can be great for that. Get too strong and all of your neighbours and other great powers can form a coalition against you so that fighting one of them means fighting all of them at once. One hint said we wouldn't have to worry about bb anymore. Maybe that points to a system more about balance of power rather than your aggressiveness.

Another solution can be the late-game revolutions. Huge instability and revolts ahoy! Loss of your beloved colonies! And the best part is if you actually become a revolutionary government your rivals have one more excuse unite against you, again.

 

[Cybvep]

The snowball effect. That is the game becoming progressively easier further you play the game. These games really needs some further challenges for mid & late game. Even if you get a huge empire, maintaining it and defending it should be hard.

My thoughts exactly.

EU I, EU II & Vic I were all poor, EUIII & Vic II were none existant when it came to the importance of a countries Navy, a strong army is good but the real return on investment was those who went down the Navy route, hopefully the new game will try harder to capture that part of the era

I think that the new trade routes system may help us with that...

However, one thing should be gone forever - whack-a-mole. Rebellions need to be overhauled, maybe more emphasis should be put on negative modifiers instead of constant revolts which can be dealt with easily. If I get tax and trade penalties, they will be painful, while several stacks of crappy rebel troops are only annoying. Only major rebellions should "spawn" on-map rebels IMO.

 

[SerialCereal]

Right, I think that the major problem with Europa Universalis III was the lack of working systems that accurately represented regions around the world. In the earlier versions of Europa Universalis III there were only two systems in the game, those being the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Whilst good ideas in themselves they lacked the functions that they served historically. The Papacy doesn't play a particularly big role in the game, and the Holy Roman Empire was just disappointing. On the topic of the Divine Wind systems, I have not played the game much but from what I have played and seen they failed disastrously, unless you played with mods. Basically, massive focus upon systems like thse would bring a smile to my face.

An other part of Europa Universalis that was incredibly disappointing has to be the colony system. In short, it was an incredibly failure. The fact that any nation could do it, and there was no particular intertwining of naval supremacy and colonies, which is an entirely a historical stance to take.

Thirdly, sort out the AI.

Finally, make it balanced.

 

[Histenchist]

My thoughts exactly.


I think that the new trade routes system may help us with that...

However, one thing should be gone forever - whack-a-mole. Rebellions need to be overhauled, maybe more emphasis should be put on negative modifiers instead of constant revolts which can be dealt with easily. If I get tax and trade penalties, they will be painful, while several stacks of crappy rebel troops are only annoying. Only major rebellions should "spawn" on-map rebels IMO.

Yes only when the rebels actually have a decent chance to "win" should they spawn imo.

 

[Fishman786]

1- Rebel-whack-a-mole. Many people have mentioned it above.

2- Total sandbox. Whilst a good deal of freeform gameplay is beneficial, too much and it looses all sense of narrative.

3- The horde system. One of the worst decisions made in the EU series IMO. A perfect example of something that sounds good in theory, but in practice ends up broken.

4- The massive tech group disparities.

 

[unmerged(52491)]

I think Victoria II's rebel system was a great idea in that regard(the jury is out in implementation). Of course you can't do the same in EUIV where there is no POPs, but EUIV really needs a new rebel mechanic that produces large uprisings instead of sporadic revolts. Protests, riots and things like can be handled by events.

 

[Blastaz]

1- Rebel-whack-a-mole. Many people have mentioned it above.

2- Total sandbox. Whilst a good deal of freeform gameplay is beneficial, too much and it looses all sense of narrative.

3- The horde system. One of the worst decisions made in the EU series IMO. A perfect example of something that sounds good in theory, but in practice ends up broken.

4- The massive tech group disparities.

Apart from tech groups I agree with this.

Rebels should pop up in 40% of your provinces at the same time once every hundred years not in 1 province every year. It's more realistic, it's less micro and it's potentially more fun. Decadence revolts from SoI good. Random CKII dukes in the holy land with 0 troops due to wrong religion penalties revolting by themselves every 10 years due to distance penalties bad.

Horde system would have worked much better for N.America and Africa than it ever did for the steppes, I modded that in once and apart from a few problems the ai had it worked pretty well.

 

[Pitt The Elder]

An all but non-existent HRE structure. Helius really did such an amazing job with this in SRI, and it would be a complete waste not to implement something similar for EUIV.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Rebellions should be meaningful and involve characters, like CKII succession/civil wars. Peasants should not just popup and rampage the country for decades over a percent chance bar.


As a reply to the above, the problem with a total sandbox is that the game doesn't really seem to develope. If the world changed in any other visual/gameplay way than its arrangement of nations on the map, it wouldn't seem like a grind to play for 400 years.

 

[neondt]

Aggression wars. Fortunately they didn't make it into CK2. No wars without a valid CB! And ideally you shouldn't be able to take too much extra than the CB allows. A few colonies or 1 core province maybe, but not half of France.

 

[Derp]

Aggression wars. Fortunately they didn't make it into CK2. No wars without a valid CB!

If there are no wars without a CB then there needs to be a way to create CBs (semi-)reliably, not just through random events.