Why I feel less and less inclined to spend time on Paradox

[Tisifoni12]

EU4:

• Battles continue to last months rather than hours. Commanders might use maneuver to delay battles, to facilitate joining with another allied army, but the combat system could use a re-think.
• Buildings are a game convention, but don't relate to reality. Everywhere had churches/mosques/temples, also markets, but fewer places had cathedrals (or grand mosques), or were major trade centres. Cathedrals and universities existed before 1444. The role and influence of these changes with time, which isn't recognised. Again a re-think.

HOI4:

• Industry; the snowballing of industrial capacity. Building factories and railways, etc. doesn't use steel, oil, etc. Please a re-think.

Of course these are fundamentals of these games, not just tinkering with bonuses or penalties.

 

[Tullaris]

These things are abstractions. Its impossible to design games like these without some kind of abstraction. Otherwise it would open up a can upon can of other worms.

 

[Arizal]

My suspension of disbelief is challenged by additions to the game(s) which, to me, remove realism. Normal buildings aren’t that much at fault, but the OP’s comment isn’t wrong.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Yes Tullaris, abstractions, so I wonder if minor or 'entry level' EUIV buildings that would be present in the vast majority of provinces could be abstracted further. Battles abstracted differently.

 

[Kovax]

A lot of it is in how the items or events are labeled and described. Rather than building a "workshop" or "church", have the improvement promote or subsidize small "workshops" throughout a province, or build either a "cathedral" instead of a "church" or numerous churches throughout a province. Or, as in the case of an EU3 Japan event, have a wandering monk found a major monastery, rather than spend half the nation's treasury for his routine food and lodging. Same effect, more immersive wording.

I do agree that battles should mostly be resolved in a week at most, not months, and even that is a pretty serious compromise, considering that many, if not most, battles of the period were resolved or at least "effectively decided" in one or two days.

For playability and programming, having large "steps" of improvement is simpler, but realistically, things tended to be much more gradual and granular. For some things, that's fine, for others it's jarringly unrealistic to suddenly have a +25% increase overnight. This is one of those things that turned me off of Slitherine games, having global effects which suddenly changed the strategic balance of the game instantly upon activation, rather than an effect which is either gradually incorporated over time, requires a modestly expensive upgrade to each unit it affects (which means you have to choose which to upgrade now and which to leave until you can afford it), or only affects newly constructed items (like ships in HOI).

A few things like this could go a long way toward making the games FEEL more realistic, without requiring a major rethink of the underlying mechanics.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

EU4:

• Battles continue to last months rather than hours. Commanders might use maneuver to delay battles, to facilitate joining with another allied army, but the combat system could use a re-think.

Hmm. Maybe if armies enter into area around the enemy armies (some provinces deep, idk how big) it would initiate manouver phase of the battle, which would have control of units taken by AI and allow (buttons to pick a stance) both sides to try to engage or disengage or wait for reinforcements while avoiding battle and fortifying positions...
Maybe the are would become a big battlemap. Think the squares you see in battle screen, but massive on provincial scale with most of the squares not having any units even with massive armies.

A game with combat like that would be interesting. Would need entirely new system though. EU4 has always been a game with tons of relatively simple systems, i don't think it would fit in EU4, though i might like it personally.

I don't really feel like its a problem in EU4, though for EU5 some improvements to combat would be great.