Europa Universalis IV

[Kyriakos]

Yes, but

a) Info exists mostly for Euro countries/part of Europe.

b) I think (not sure) that dynasty was not that important in the second half of EU time-frame. I think most countries were keeping the same dynasty by then. Whereas in the case of the Byzantine Empire there were numerous dynasties coming from different social strata, royal, military, merchant etc

 

[Dell19]

I don't think that would be too much fun, it must be something comprehensible like CK2

Yeah the idea of having genuine revolts is interesting but there would need to be some mechanism for a human player to prevent or mitigate the risk.

It wouldn't be great to be in a war against one of your main rivals and then get an event that sees half of your armies turn into rebels. Even whilst at peace it would still be frustrating particularly if you had perfect stability at the time or had a colonial empire in lots of different areas.

 

[Evie]

Factions would be amazing. It seems EU4 is taking a baby step in that direction via its handling of rebels (you can now see, and negotiate with, potential rebels as well as actual up-in-arms rebels), but sadly it seems to fall far short of a good system.

One can only suspect that the emphasize on factions in MMTG may have helped convince Paradox NOT to have them.

Hopefully the trade manipulation game will give us something to do in peacetime now.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

Yeah the idea of having genuine revolts is interesting but there would need to be some mechanism for a human player to prevent or mitigate the risk.

It wouldn't be great to be in a war against one of your main rivals and then get an event that sees half of your armies turn into rebels. Even whilst at peace it would still be frustrating particularly if you had perfect stability at the time or had a colonial empire in lots of different areas.

Yeah, having it event-triggered would be a poor way of implementing it. You'd probably have a "throne security" rating modified by country-size, stability, monarch ability, legitimacy, centralisation, and events or event decisions - all of which would be listed so you could mitigate it. Having a pretender take over isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. If you've got a poor monarch who has an even worse son and you don't fancy 50+ years of mediocre leadership, why not use the modifiers to make his time on the throne short and interesting (at the risk of destablising your country)

I can imagine a screen on the country overview thing listed "threats" with a list of noble families with stats like "strength" and "happiness" (for want of a better word) and what religion they are so you know where the threats are and what you can do to mollify them at least until you get out of Feudal Monarchy. For example if you have a couple of powerful families, and they don't like you (either because of where you've moved the sliders, or because of some event decisions, a couple of comets are sighted and suddenly your 9/9/9 king falls off his horse and and his 3/3/3 gibbering idiot, of questionable parentage, takes the throne, you know there's going to be trouble but you can see it coming. You can work with it to try to mitigate it or choose not to and stir things up.

Maybe you'd have different factions for different government types, so each government felt different. This "families" theme would certainly work for Feudal Monarchies or Noble/merchant republics, (A Noble Republic run by nobles from families vying for power which you could influence rather than just selecting "bureaucratic candidate" "diplomatic candidate" or "Military candidate"!) and to give the feel of "transition from a feudal domain to a nation state" government tech could reduce the power of noble families so that by mid-game it's nominal and/or new, more agenda-led factions could emerge and grow in importance.


At the very least it'd give you something to do in peacetime, make you feel like you were governing an early modern nation with all the changeable and lethal politics within it and it would make -3 stability really dangerous even to national existence.

Still, it's all pie-in-the-sky because EU IV isn't going in that direction and that's what I'm finding a bit disappointing. This is the time to try this kind of thing and they're not. You can't really justify the kind of effort needed to implement dynamic factions able conspire to topple governments, or rebellions that are almost, but not quite, nations in their own right until they are crushed, for an simple expansion pack, yet a lot of the things they're showing off in the Dev Diaries really can be.

 

[Dell19]

I think I would like something like this if the negative consequences are aimed mainly at large nations / blobs whilst small nations are less affected. So maybe a small nation only ever has two factions in a rebellion and you get to pick which side so even if you were fighting a war at the same time it wouldn't necessarily be disastrous.

My bias in this is that I would like to be able to play as a small or medium sized nation and be able to survive without necessarily becoming a blob myself as thats usually when I quit. I guess there are two parts that would need to change to allow this, the AI not being too greedy in wars (I can live with the player being under the same restrictions). The second part would be something like what you seem to be suggesting where internal conflict in larger nations gives a chance for smaller countries to regain their cores. This may not appeal to people who like to build blob nations...

 

[NBAfan]

Factions would be amazing. It seems EU4 is taking a baby step in that direction via its handling of rebels (you can now see, and negotiate with, potential rebels as well as actual up-in-arms rebels), but sadly it seems to fall far short of a good system.

One can only suspect that the emphasize on factions in MMTG may have helped convince Paradox NOT to have them.

Hopefully the trade manipulation game will give us something to do in peacetime now.

I wouldn't count it out in a future expansion though

 

[sophie]

Yes, but

a) Info exists mostly for Euro countries/part of Europe.

b) I think (not sure) that dynasty was not that important in the second half of EU time-frame. I think most countries were keeping the same dynasty by then. Whereas in the case of the Byzantine Empire there were numerous dynasties coming from different social strata, royal, military, merchant etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Spanish_Succession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Austrian_Succession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonny_Prince_Charlie

 

[civ_king]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Spanish_Succession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Austrian_Succession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonny_Prince_Charlie

The War of Spanish Succession was only fought on like three continents and the Austrian Succession Crisis was only on what five continents? Globe spanning wars are so like "not that important".

 

[Kyriakos]

That's cool and all, i noted i was not sure what the silly west did in the second part of the EU timeframe

Personally i would rather EU stays at least flexible, rather than making a change focused on two specific conflicts, between a few specific powers, and somehow use that as a reason to install some dynasty system. Surely it takes little imagination to see that in such a case the EU game would have to be set in such a way that Spain and Austria are pretty much in the same position in all games. Rather dull in my view

 

[Evie]

It still isn't a realistic change to expect to be made to the game, because creating dynastic family trees would still massively multiply the amount of information the game would both nneed to keep track of and generate. So they'd need to cut into other information the game keep track off and generate.

Not to mention that coming up with rulers list for the RoW is hard enough without startign to have to keep track of siblings, spouses, etc.

So what do we cut for dynastic family trees? The trade system (Which is far more fundamental to what the game is about)? Delay the game and increase the price? Does the addition actually make the game a better game, or just slightly more realistic/immersive?

 

[Luckymoose]

It still isn't a realistic change to expect to be made to the game, because creating dynastic family trees would still massively multiply the amount of information the game would both nneed to keep track of and generate. So they'd need to cut into other information the game keep track off and generate.

I think you overestimate how difficult it is to implement a simple dynasty system. You can have random monarchs as EU3 had, but with more detailed dynastic relations. Royal marriages, succession wars, etc. Royalty played such a key role in how Europe developed during this period that they should put a good deal more emphasis on dynastic relations.

Also, this is 2013 and computers can handle a lot more than you think.

 

[History_Buff]

Factions would be amazing. It seems EU4 is taking a baby step in that direction via its handling of rebels (you can now see, and negotiate with, potential rebels as well as actual up-in-arms rebels), but sadly it seems to fall far short of a good system.

One can only suspect that the emphasize on factions in MMTG may have helped convince Paradox NOT to have them.

Hopefully the trade manipulation game will give us something to do in peacetime now.

I'm completely with you here. A better representation of of domestic politics is probably the big thing EU4 is missing. It's true that MMtG probably isn't helping on this front, but look at Wiz's faction system for CK2+. You could probably transfer that right over, generalizing out the individual vassals, and it would be great. And Wiz even works for PI now.

 

[sophie]

That's cool and all, i noted i was not sure what the silly west did in the second part of the EU timeframe

Personally i would rather EU stays at least flexible, rather than making a change focused on two specific conflicts, between a few specific powers, and somehow use that as a reason to install some dynasty system. Surely it takes little imagination to see that in such a case the EU game would have to be set in such a way that Spain and Austria are pretty much in the same position in all games. Rather dull in my view

This is more than just two specific conflicts though. If you had been following along on this thread I made multiple multi-thousand word posts detailing why dynastic conflict was the cornerstone of historical development in Europe during the entirety of this period up until maybe the last 30-50 years.

For example:

A family tree would be nice for a start. I mean for chrissakes this was the era of the Sforza, the Gonzaga, the d'Este, the d'Orsini, the Colonna, the de'Medici, the de Luxembourg, the Habsbourg, the Trastámara, the Valois, the Bourbon, the Hohenstaufen, the Hohenzollern, the d'Aragon, the Tudor, the Stuart, the d'Orange, the Vasa, the Oldenburg, and a hundred other major houses which I neglect to mention for the sake of brevity. This was a period in which the Habsburgs inherited half of Europe and then subsequently divided in half, a period when Portugal and Aragón were inherited into the Spanish holdings (and subsequently caused rebellions which nearly destroyed the monarchy), a period when Sweden and Denmark fought endlessly over hereditary and territorial rights, when England, Scotland, and Wales were legally united under one crown. If you study the history of Europe in this period (at least until maaaybe the 18th century) it really shouldn't be a story of state versus state, but rather a story of enormous dynastic family versus enormous dynastic family. What we got in EU3 was a mechanic which a) gave your state more legitimacy, and b) gave you a small chance of inheriting a country, but which you couldn't really actively follow and which was entirely backended. Royal marriages are entirely frivolous in this game, when in history the marrying off of the only daughter of Lorenzo de'Medici to the second son of France was a major diplomatic coup for the House de'Medici. The only information dynastically you got in EU3 was who the king was, what his house was, and who his heir was (not even a mention of how he was related to your king). This goes double for families, and papal elections in general. For Italy especially, getting a pope of your family elected into the see (or even getting a son into the Curia) was a major geopolitical focus. Again it's a virtual nonentity in EU3. Papal influence is an abstracted and underplayed aspect of this game (which hamstrings most players heavily because it requires keeping a vital slider further into the "narrowminded" region; meaning it generally isn't worth the benefits it provides), when historically the election of Julius III in the middle of the 16th century was of prime focus to the kings of France and Spain.

The game also doesn't really portray the role of "lesser" (nonroyal) families and their impact on the sweep of history. The closest it comes is by starting France off splintered among smaller vassals. This kind of works, but it underplays the strength of a lot of these higher nobles relative to the French king, and the influence they could play on foreign policy. EU3 effectively has no way of representing the importance of the House de Guise on 16th century French history, as one example. And this is leaving aside entirely how poorly it could represent, for example the role of the Darcys in the Pilgrimage of Grace, or the rise and fall of Northumberland, and Somerset during the regency of Edward VI or Leicester under Elizabeth I.

Right now this stuff is eschewed in favor or a Total War-esque linear territory expansion game. You don't face any kind of earth-shattering diplomatic or internal dilemmas. The biggest questions you have to ask are "how can I get a CB against x country", "how much land can I annex without going over my infamy limit", "will this peace make my borders look ugly", and "how long until my truce is up". I mean even the economic facets of this game are little more than a means to increase your army size and prevent you from taking massive casualties in future wars (through falling behind in tech). This game might as well just throw all the game portions out the window and become a border-drawing simulator, because aside from a little fluff here and there, that's more or less what the game is at this point.

 

[civ_king]

It still isn't a realistic change to expect to be made to the game, because creating dynastic family trees would still massively multiply the amount of information the game would both nneed to keep track of and generate. So they'd need to cut into other information the game keep track off and generate.

Not to mention that coming up with rulers list for the RoW is hard enough without startign to have to keep track of siblings, spouses, etc.

So what do we cut for dynastic family trees? The trade system (Which is far more fundamental to what the game is about)? Delay the game and increase the price? Does the addition actually make the game a better game, or just slightly more realistic/immersive?

Do keep in mind that even if there the same system as CK2 that there's 1/100 the people to take care of and 1/20 of the data for each

 

[Evie]

I think you overestimate how difficult it is to implement a simple dynasty system. You can have random monarchs as EU3 had, but with more detailed dynastic relations. Royal marriages, succession wars, etc. Royalty played such a key role in how Europe developed during this period that they should put a good deal more emphasis on dynastic relations.

Also, this is 2013 and computers can handle a lot more than you think.

A simple dynastic system would still requires tracing family lines and lines of successions (that's, after all, the fundamental aspects of a dynastic system. That means constant random generation of character - not only your ruler and heir, but their siblings, both male and female. It means the game marrying off not only your ruler, but all those siblings, so they can in turn generate heir who might be in the line of succession and have a shot at inheriting the throne.

Yes, you wouldn't deal with all the counts and whatnot, and random courtiers. On the flip side you would have to do this for every nation in the world. And, quite probably, to handle a far wider variety of succession systems, marriage systems, family systems. Or were you planning to make an European system and tell the RoW "Well, too bad for you, just pretend you had European succession laws, it's not like you matter anyway?".

And it's not about what COMPUTERS can handle. It's about how much time the devs can afford to throw at the issue.

I'm sorry, but while it may show up in an expansion/DLC (and that's perfectly fine), putting it in the base game would very much require taking something out, and quite frankly, there's nothing in the game that I'd sacrifice for a shoddy, two-bit dynastic system that would have little actual GAME purpose beyond allowing you to predict inheritance (which is frankly a minimal gain)

 

[Maniacal]

You are the only one who is actually expecting them to start adding it RIGHT NOW with the game getting closer to release. No one else is expecting or saying that, simply saying that it is something that would be a great addition. As such, no, no they would not have to cut something else out. Its not like the game can only be 500 MBs in total size or something, and any art assets it adds (since 99% of it would be text and coding) would be of negligible size anyway.

CK2 is perfectly able to handle multiple systems of inheritance, I am sure, since its more or less the same dev team, they figure out how to add them in a less complex system.

 

[Evie]

I'm well aware, of course, that nobody think it would be added now, this late in development.

I was, however, under the impression lots of people were unhappy with this not being something Paradox included in the game from the start, and were arguing this is something that should have been put into the vanilla game. If the argument is more in the nature of something you want in a DLC...sure.
But on the other hand, if we're talking about "This should have been in the VAnilla game", it's not something that could have realistically been added to the game without cutting a serious amount of other content. Not because "It takes time to figure out how to do it", or because "computers can't handle it".

Because implementing any feature in the game, and making sure it works with the game's other features without major bugs, take a lot of time, and so there's an upper limit to how many features you can put in the base game. Especially features that require quite a lot of work from the game engine (eg, constant generation of new characters, etc). Have different succession method? Then that's yet more stuff to implement.

I probably still wouldn't pay for that DLC, because quite frankly being able to predict inheritance doesn't really improve the game enough to be worth my money from where I stand - it's a cosmetic add-on, fundamentally.

 

[Maniacal]

But on the other hand, if we're talking about "This should have been in the VAnilla game", it's not something that could have realistically been added to the game without cutting a serious amount of other content.

Yes, because I am sure they wouldn't have been able to add it into the main plan of developing game given that the final release date isn't decided well into development and all.

Just because you say it would result in a lot of other content being cut doesn't make it true no matter how many times you repeat it in. Your argument is not at all specific to this idea, but is an argument against ANY new feature added to EUIV.

Because implementing any feature in the game, and making sure it works with the game's other features without major bugs, take a lot of time, and so there's an upper limit to how many features you can put in the base game. Especially features that require quite a lot of work from the game engine (eg, constant generation of new characters, etc). Have different succession method? Then that's yet more stuff to implement.

Its the same engine that CK2 uses, its already capable of handling multiple characters.

 

[Evie]

Just because you say it would result in a lot of other content being cut doesn't make it true no matter how many times you repeat it in. Your argument is not at all specific to this idea, but is an argument against ANY new feature added to EUIV.

Yes and no. It's a basic observation that the best games are those that focus on their core features rather than adding features after features after features in the name of simulation. As the Civ IV tech quote went, a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Feature creep is not a hypothetical. It's not a figment of my imagination. It's a very real thing that crippled one of Paradox's own Clausewitz-engine releases (HOI III). Of course, not everyone gets that. Ubik, most famously, didn't realize feature creep was a very real thing and a very real problem. His game ended up more than a year overdue and still bug-ridden to the point of unplayability while he kept going back to add features for realism.

But Paradox? Anyone who think, after HoI III and after Ubik, that Paradox isn't acutely aware of what risk feature creep represent, really isn't paying attention. And indeed, CK2 is a beautiful example of focused design.

So I would certainly put money that Paradox, when anyone comes up with a new feature idea at one of their design meeting, is going to ask exactly the questions I'm asking - do we have the right amount of dev. time for this? What should we cut to get more dev time back to work on this? Does it really add more to gameplay and to our gamer's enjoyment than the feature we cut? Exactly the questions I'm asking, in other terms.

They've also been very explicit that they were designing their game around gameplay, not realism, especially on the topic of the map. So something that has fairly minor gameplay effects (ie, "You can now predict who will inherit what country when a bit more!) and that exist mostly for realism purpose (so dynasties, marriages, etc are more directly represented)...unlikely to get high on their priority list, that.

 

[civ_king]

Yes and no. It's a basic observation that the best games are those that focus on their core features rather than adding features after features after features in the name of simulation. As the Civ IV tech quote went, a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Feature creep is not a hypothetical. It's not a figment of my imagination. It's a very real thing that crippled one of Paradox's own Clausewitz-engine releases (HOI III). Of course, not everyone gets that. Ubik, most famously, didn't realize feature creep was a very real thing and a very real problem. His game ended up more than a year overdue and still bug-ridden to the point of unplayability while he kept going back to add features for realism.

But Paradox? Anyone who think, after HoI III and after Ubik, that Paradox isn't acutely aware of what risk feature creep represent, really isn't paying attention. And indeed, CK2 is a beautiful example of focused design.

So I would certainly put money that Paradox, when anyone comes up with a new feature idea at one of their design meeting, is going to ask exactly the questions I'm asking - do we have the right amount of dev. time for this? What should we cut to get more dev time back to work on this? Does it really add more to gameplay and to our gamer's enjoyment than the feature we cut? Exactly the questions I'm asking, in other terms.

They've also been very explicit that they were designing their game around gameplay, not realism, especially on the topic of the map. So something that has fairly minor gameplay effects (ie, "You can now predict who will inherit what country when a bit more!) and that exist mostly for realism purpose (so dynasties, marriages, etc are more directly represented)...unlikely to get high on their priority list, that.

DLC really enables safe and gradual feature creep; you create a fully functional game which is polished and released then you can do those other features as DLC.