Europa Universalis IV

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Personally I think Monarch Power is a very good mechanic, and I don't see any problems at all with the new changes to core system beyond conquered colonial territory counting towards Overextension.

 

[Sranchammer]

Perhaps tying Monarch power into buildings and stability could make it more interesting?

I'm still working on how to remove cores altogether.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Personally I think Monarch Power is a very good mechanic.

it's shite currently, focus on trade and naval abilities and bizarrely you fall behind in naval tech, and this is with a high diplo leader and sinking that trade gold into a +3 advisor.

 

[XenomorphII]

it's shite currently, focus on trade and naval abilities and bizarrely you fall behind in naval tech, and this is with a high diplo leader and sinking that trade gold into a +3 advisor.

Except that it still will work out in your favor. You fall behind for a little bit, but then catch up, and with a decent leader and reasonable planning you should have little trouble with others. Also don't try and ram down idea after idea unless you are already the leader in tech (for your area) and are at the (or close to the) ahead of time penalty (unless you are going for an idea critical to your situation).

 

[Average Manatee]

Any RTS in which your primary resource is (essentially) entirely dependent on a RNG is simply badly designed. Worse, in EU4 it leads to the game being so absurdly homogenized and devoid of any real strategy.

Cores are ridiculously stupid now. I don't even know what they are supposed to represent. Before they represented the legitimacy in owning a province. It took 50 years to attain that. Now? Monarch waves his magic wand and 12 months later everything is cool no mater what you conquest. Or he doesn't wave his wand and the province is never cored, ever.

 

[Grinolf]

You have some control over MP as republic.

And it was 50 years of waiting for cores in EU3, that were extremely stupid, which resulted to lack any provinces, that you didn't want to take even with scaling stability and tech cost. New system are much better, but need improvements, since it doesn't make sence for cost been based only on base tax. So now it is much cheaper in terms of MP for Russia to annex Poland, than colonising Siberia. And it is definitely a problem.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, the colonial effect on Overextension needs a little work. Though without historical determinism, it's difficult to model the Partition of Poland too.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Well, colonial overextension makes sense in that colonies are occupied territories, as well. It's just not another country's citizens, but natives that need to be integrated. It's not free empty land.
And they're uncivilized. So it should actually be more difficult to core a colony, since "cores" in this game, apparently, mostly represent integration into one's domain, and not simply claims to it.

That said, I do agree that coring mechanic needs work. You should have some [expensive] actions you could take to speed it up slightly, but cores should generally be acquired by themselves and over long stretches of time.

 

[Grinolf]

In Poland case, I was mostly about the fact, that claims make cores much cheaper, bun one can't have a claim on it's own colony. And colonies, that are not overseas, cost a full price.
More flexible system, were cost are based on religion, culture and other countries cores, but not arbitrary "distant overseas" modifier, would be very welcome.

But tes, current implementation of Libertum Veto cripple me. It is only some emergency in exchange for long term loss. Not something, that allow your neighbours to annex your country without much effort. But from the other hand, I can't think about any reason, why player would decide to implement something like that even in the desperate situation.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well Liberum Veto was already terrible in EU3, so it's par course. You'd take a huge hit to all your most important sliders in exchange for some shitty extra troops.

 

[Malakal]

Any RTS in which your primary resource is (essentially) entirely dependent on a RNG is simply badly designed. Worse, in EU4 it leads to the game being so absurdly homogenized and devoid of any real strategy.

Cores are ridiculously stupid now. I don't even know what they are supposed to represent. Before they represented the legitimacy in owning a province. It took 50 years to attain that. Now? Monarch waves his magic wand and 12 months later everything is cool no mater what you conquest. Or he doesn't wave his wand and the province is never cored, ever.

Your primary resource is at best 40% dependent on RNG since you get 3 base points always and can get up to 3 more from advisors giving you base 6 points per month to play with. And monarch stats tend to average out, you wont be seeing strings of 0-0-0 rulers. Finally if you are so inclined you can always change to a republic very quickly and suffer no RNG.

Cores are indeed stupid and need tweaking when it comes to time and cost.

 

[Emily]

Cores are borderline moronic. It should be as it was in EU3

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Cores are borderline moronic. It should be as it was in EU3

Cores are much better than they were in EUIII.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, there's not a single thing EU4 does WORSE than EU3. EU3 was an absurdly BORING game.

 

[Sranchammer]

And EU4 is a lifeless game with a braindead learning curve. I'm not saying that can't be fixed, but I won't deny it's woefully barren.

It irks me that one can essentially not pay your troops in peacetime with no repercussions. You would think with all the crazy random events, they would have some devoted to maintenance.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You did the exact same thing in EU3 until you were drowning in money.

 

[RedScum]

 

[KoolNoodles]

Coring provinces in EU4 = awesome button?

 

[Average Manatee]

Coring provinces in EU4 = awesome button?

That or teching.

I did get the idea that EU4 was designed around awesome button gameplay. The majority of mechanics have very little weight to them since the ideology is that the player sees something wrong and spends monarch mana to cast a spell that makes it go away. Vs. EU3 where things were much more about planning and the long term.

Any RTS in which your primary resource is (essentially) entirely dependent on a RNG is simply badly designed. Worse, in EU4 it leads to the game being so absurdly homogenized and devoid of any real strategy.

Cores are ridiculously stupid now. I don't even know what they are supposed to represent. Before they represented the legitimacy in owning a province. It took 50 years to attain that. Now? Monarch waves his magic wand and 12 months later everything is cool no mater what you conquest. Or he doesn't wave his wand and the province is never cored, ever.

Your primary resource is at best 40% dependent on RNG since you get 3 base points always and can get up to 3 more from advisors giving you base 6 points per month to play with. And monarch stats tend to average out, you wont be seeing strings of 0-0-0 rulers. Finally if you are so inclined you can always change to a republic very quickly and suffer no RNG.

Advisors aren't priced to be a player decision though. And non-western nations get less than the 3 points. And Monarchs go from 0-6, a total range of 7, so even with your math monarchs are actually responsible for over 53%, but in reality it's more like 70-80%.

The fact that monarch stats tends to average out has no bearing on the matter. We know what a RNG means. You can certainly see strings of very poor rulers.

Republics are the equivalent of telling your DM that instead of wasting your time rolling 3d6 for stats you'd just like to take 1 for all rolls and get it out of the way.

 

[Sranchammer]

Monarch stats could be even across the board.

 

[XenomorphII]

I would like to see the possibility for monarchs to be able to hire/appoint a regent to boost a stat/some stats/all stats to counter the RNG to a degree (though I have had some shit rulers for long periods and managed to stay competitive if not dominant).

Have the main drawbacks to regents be damage to legitimacy and prestige, bad events (related to regent seizing power maybe, which could ruin legitimacy and prestige even more and maybe cause vassals and/or PUs to break), weakened diplomacy (would anyone want to become the vassal of someone who cannot rule their own country, and maybe other monarchies seeing you in a more negative light), and that regents would be generally appointed for life (so maybe give them different bonuses like an adviser, but also include a negative bonus for them so that they aren't a duh of course choice?).

 

[KoolNoodles]

I don't mind random elements in my games, in fact sometimes they make things the most interesting, but not usually when they so strongly affect the outcome and are not something that can be realistically planned for or minimized. Monarch power is one of those "random" elements that goes too far sometimes IMO(it is less a problem with major powers and later in the game). For example, getting good monarchs that can last a reasonable amount of time(say 15-20 years) can get a Mesoamerican nation to their first idea, which can open up several game play opportunities, and even is the difference between sure defeat and possible survival. That is a bit too much chance. If you get even one bad admin monarch(who is around for 10+ years) all your plans are basically ruined, and advisers can't even save you.

That's an extreme example to be sure, where other nations might just stumble in tech or an idea, but you get the point.

Edit: And I like how ideas and tech work now, it just needs some fixing. Monarchs/Emperors, etc. were powerful, yes, but if the entirety of a country's progress on three different fronts so heavily depends on who is sitting on the throne, there are some problems with that. Both from a historical perspective and game play. Maybe if monarch power bonus was weakened across the board, but advisors/something else was the main boost for tech, then it would be good.

I don't mind if having a brilliant diplomat for a Monarch gives you some nice bonuses to relations, because that makes total sense. Or if having a brilliant tactician makes him/her a great general and boosts morale. But neither of those things should help you build a better ship of the line or cannon.

 

[Krash]

Tried going back to EU3. It just can't be done. Sliders are the most boring thing ever, hammering away chars that are one time expendable, terrible trade, random conversions, every nation plays the same, etc etc. I'll take my flawed gem EU4 thank you. It's funny though how many of the things I enjoy the most weren't a big part of their PR - that new diplomacy is the best! And the coalitions rather than infamy, much more natural way to check fast expansion. And the new economic system (the EU3 one was a travesty of complexity for complexity's sake, with 0 addition to gameplay). And also the nicer (but still not perfect) AI. But ffs fix claims and coring plz. Some balance would be nice, but at least it's not full of fundamentally broken features.

That or teching.

I did get the idea that EU4 was designed around awesome button gameplay. The majority of mechanics have very little weight to them since the ideology is that the player sees something wrong and spends monarch mana to cast a spell that makes it go away. Vs. EU3 where things were much more about planning and the long term.

Not exactly true now, is it? For example, in EU3 uncored provinces don't cost anything. Just grab the land and wait. Whatever slight tech loss you incurred for more provinces was unimportant. Whereas here I know if I grab some land it will set me back in some other area. The whole game is built around the idea of deferred choice, which is nice. About to go to war on the high seas? Let's pick that naval idea, but shit now I might get behind in tech, etc etc.

 

[Sranchammer]

I wish I could enjoy vanilla Paradox games like you, Krash. You seem very happy.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ideas are good. Tech is dumbed down with only 3 lines though.

If I were to completely overhaul EU4's monarch and tech system, I'd do this:

Monarch stats go from 0-3.
Advisor stats go from 1-5. This is to represent that an advisor with 100% dedication to a field can attain a much higher proficiency than a monarch.
Advisor's cost scales linearly with power. As it is now, having 1/1/1 advisors cost like 1/10th that of a single level 3 advisor, which basically eliminates being able to prioritize one tech field over another. By leveling out the cost curve, players can dedicate all of their income to a level 5 advisor, or to 2/2/1 advisors, etc.
Advisor costs go up with time and with empire size (similar to how tech cost increased in EU3 with empire size). If you have a fuckhueg empire you'll need a bigger advisor team that requires more money to operate.

The upshot of this is that monarchs can still substantially direct your nation, but players have an actual choice in their growth. Furthermore, by scaling advisor costs by nation size the game is no longer 100% about map painting everywhere, quality of provinces and vertical growth becomes important too.

Tech has 6 tech paths rather than 3. The 3 current tech paths are made into:

-Administration. Gives NIs, governmental changes/bonuses.
-Land Technology. Gives land unit bonuses.
-Naval Technology. Gives Naval unit bonuses.

Then we add 3 new paths. They are:

-Production. Self Explanatory.
-Trade. Also Self Explanatory.
-Military tactics. Gives the Land/Naval buildings, Supply bonuses, etc.

These will be combination fields, with production being Admin+Land, Trade being Admin+Naval, and Military Tactics being Land + Naval. Improving one of these technologies will cost either of these resources, whichever the player wishes to spend.

 

[Average Manatee]

Not exactly true now, is it? For example, in EU3 uncored provinces don't cost anything. Just grab the land and wait. Whatever slight tech loss you incurred for more provinces was unimportant. Whereas here I know if I grab some land it will set me back in some other area.

Uncored provinces rebel, costing tons of manpower to put down and weakening your empire. It also costs a great amount of time to core, and time is the most valuable resource in an RTS. What does coring cost in EU4? A small setback to ideas, which is meaningless to western nations who have too much power and which low-tech nations couldn't care less about because they'll lose all power when westernizing? Yeah, basically nothing.

The whole game is built around the idea of deferred choice, which is nice.

Nice way to say that it's based around waiting for your mana to recharge.

About to go to war on the high seas? Let's pick that naval idea, but shit now I might get behind in tech, etc etc.

Or just spam ships, because money is useless in EU4.

Tried going back to EU3. It just can't be done. Sliders are the most boring thing ever, hammering away chars that are one time expendable, terrible trade, random conversions, every nation plays the same, etc etc. I'll take my flawed gem EU4 thank you. It's funny though how many of the things I enjoy the most weren't a big part of their PR - that new diplomacy is the best! And the coalitions rather than infamy, much more natural way to check fast expansion. And the new economic system (the EU3 one was a travesty of complexity for complexity's sake, with 0 addition to gameplay). And also the nicer (but still not perfect) AI. But ffs fix claims and coring plz. Some balance would be nice, but at least it's not full of fundamentally broken features.

Sliders boring? You change them once every few decades. It's about long term goals. And they replaced it with nothing. How is nothing more fun than something?

Terrible trade? Meh, both are really gamey and easy to abuse. If you want something terrible, consider that trade is irrelevant in EU4 since money is useless.

Every nation plays the same? Wow, EU4 is literally 100x worse than EU3 in this.

Random conversions I'll give you. But equally retarded is 0% conversion rate bullshit.

Diplomacy is better. One of the few things that is certainly 100% improved.

Coalitions are retarded and broken. If you want to make the new infamy system work, make trade more important and have everyone embargo you so that you die a withered husk unable to support your armies. As it is the game just gives you bullshit "you can't negotiate with anyone but the war leader".

Economy in EU3 was simple unless you were retarded.