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telcontar posted:They chose it because that's the name of the Philippe Thibaut-designed board game which mechanically and thematically inspired EU1. Which really did only deal with Europe:  But seeing as how EU3 deals with the entire world, it can't even lean back on its 'origins' as an excuse to not do its best to accurately deal with everyone outside of Europe - not that I can ever recall PI itself ever making the dumb "name argument". Gorgo Primus fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 01:17
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Man, seeing those terribly drawn provinces sure does bring back some fond memories.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:34
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Graham Gremlin posted:There's three factions, the eunuchs, the temple and the bureaucrats and depending who has the most influence in court you can't do certain things. For example you can only declare war if the temple faction is in charge and you can only send colonists if the eunuchs are in charge. Has there been any word on if this is going to be in EU4? I sincerely hope not, or at least I hope they do something to make it interesting to play, like letting you do missions for each faction even if that faction is not in power. Some kind of agency in changing factions rather than just waiting for a bar to fill up would go a long way.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:38
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Graham Gremlin posted:There's three factions, the eunuchs, the temple and the bureaucrats and depending who has the most influence in court you can't do certain things. For example you can only declare war if the temple faction is in charge and you can only send colonists if the eunuchs are in charge. Factions System posted:temples = Basically, playing EU3 as Ming in DW is playing EU3 with boxing gloves on. EDIT: It's hilarious in Steppe Wolfe (everything's hilarious in Steppe Wolfe) because you can reform out of Celestial Monarchy but doing so doesn't actually get rid of the Factions. I'm truly puzzled about how that even works because I thought that the Factions were tied to the Celestial Monarchy govtype. Patter Song fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 01:46
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Gorgo Primus posted:Which really did only deal with Europe: Oh no. Europa Universalis the board game had two maps, if I remember correctly. A Europe map and a 'Rest of the World' map. I have a copy in the basement I can haul up if need be.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:23
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Honestly, the idea of being blocked from certain actions and having to balance sliders and events was fine. The part where Paradox hosed up was not making faction influence static, but rather constantly dropping/rising similarly to how relations work in EU. That meant the events thet popped up giving +5 influence to a faction had absolutely no meaning (stalling the inevitable domination of a given faction for a month, tops) and the only way to play it was to get sliders into equilibirum and just push that +0.01 influence towards what you wanted to achieve. I'd be cool with leaving the factions as they are (perhaps changing locking out options into harsh penalties) if only there was a way to meaningfully navigate around the limitations it could be fun and interesting - balancing current needs and penalties for going against the flow. Oh, and probably they'd have to do something about AI being too stupid to play the faction game, without which Ming crawls to Ural every second game.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:32
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Lichtenstein posted:Honestly, the idea of being blocked from certain actions and having to balance sliders and events was fine. The part where Paradox hosed up was not making faction influence static, but rather constantly dropping/rising similarly to how relations work in EU. That meant the events thet popped up giving +5 influence to a faction had absolutely no meaning (stalling the inevitable domination of a given faction for a month, tops) and the only way to play it was to get sliders into equilibirum and just push that +0.01 influence towards what you wanted to achieve. In order to do factions right, I feel like 1) The player needs to be able to meaningfully influence the balance of power, as you say. 2) The factions need additional unique bonuses attached to them that aren't just "you can now do this thing literally every single other nation can do," like make it so the temple faction increases religious conversion speed a good amount. And 3) Each faction having a unique mechanic attached to them to make them feel different would be nice, but time consuming to develop, I'm sure. Just make them feel different somehow, and not just a different set of pluses and minuses.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:40
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4) The player should be able to say "gently caress this faction poo poo we're changing government forms to something reasonable" like literally every other country on the planet is able to.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:44
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Eh, the whole faction system was put in place explicitly to nerf the China (in a more interesting way than slapping a 10% tech group), so I think it's ok there's no bonus per se for supporting a given faction. Inexhaustible streams of gold and recruits are your unique plus. IMO there's a plae for a lot of interesting stick and carrot via events and decisions, which is the place where it should be put - as, after all, it's that political maneuvering that's supposed to be interesting about this system. If the factions are to be reinstated in EU IV, I just hope they'll be less about limiting player's option and more about asking what price is he willing to pay to have it his way.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:58
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My main problem with the faction system is that it sort of interferes with what I feel the EU series is supposed to represent: I am some sort of immortal national spirit that guides my state, immune to petty human opposition. I am not the ruler. Why should I be obstructed by mere bureaucrats or eunuchs when I am a God (of my specific chosen people)? Come to think of it, Mr. Human playing EU3 is a lot like Yahweh: constantly dealing with rebellious monarchs, people converting to Ba'al worship, escaping the destruction of Judah by agreeing to vassalization by the Big Assyrian Blob (with their totally unfair chariot tech...totally unbalanced)...having cores on the Northern Kingdom you just can't use, having a great ruler named Josiah with whom you are just about to Assyrianize with when he's slain by the Egyptians and the stab hit and lovely king Zedekiah leads to your annexation by Babylon... Could we have Old Testament Universalis please? EDIT: One of the loading tips could be "Egypt is a broken reed." (Isaiah advising Ahaz not to ally with Egypt vs. Assyria) Isaiah 36:6 NIV posted:Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. Patter Song fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 03:03
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Fister Roboto posted:4) The player should be able to say "gently caress this faction poo poo we're changing government forms to something reasonable" like literally every other country on the planet is able to. Maybe it should be harder for them as well. China was so deeply ingrained with its tradition and internal politics, that reform was very difficult. My point was that they should make the faction system actually fun to play in and not something that makes you go "gently caress this faction poo poo."
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Jan 29, 2013 03:03
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Maybe it should be harder for them as well. China was so deeply ingrained with its tradition and internal politics, that reform was very difficult. My point was that they should make the faction system actually fun to play in and not something that makes you go "gently caress this faction poo poo." Yeah. In theory, factions should be an interesting way to make big empires fun to play in EU since otherwise they become a steamroller with no need for cautious diplomatic activity. But the way they were implemented was really goddamn stupid and not fun to play in the least.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:30
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Maybe it should be harder for them as well. China was so deeply ingrained with its tradition and internal politics, that reform was very difficult. My point was that they should make the faction system actually fun to play in and not something that makes you go "gently caress this faction poo poo." Well yeah, that's what stability hits are supposed to represent. If England can transition from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional republic in just 7 stab hits, why can't China get rid of its terrible government?
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Jan 29, 2013 03:33
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Fister Roboto posted:4) The player should be able to say "gently caress this faction poo poo we're changing government forms to something reasonable" like literally every other country on the planet is able to. I think Ming can reform out of the factions but it requires you to form China. Personally I like the idea of factions, even extending them to other nations though with factions not providing as big of bonuses or maluses in other countries. The execution in DW though was badly done and needed work.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:33
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Fister Roboto posted:Well yeah, that's what stability hits are supposed to represent. If England can transition from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional republic in just 7 stab hits, why can't China get rid of its terrible government? Maybe England shouldn't be able to do that with just a stab hit. Maybe changing government types should be difficult for everyone.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:38
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The Europa Universalis series has been roughly deterministic so far (in that Europe will generally come to dominate in a way that looks like the way they did historically), so any mechanics related to non-European nations should work to keep that goal. In that sense factions aren't that bad, because you do need to keep China from acting too ahistorically. Thematically, this doesn't work too well because factions tend to be too static, and it's not very fun to play as, but I can certainly see why those mechanics are there and agree with the impulse behind them. Now, for me personally, my ideal mechanics would do this for the AI but allow the player to jump the rails and take roads not taken, but this is something that's both time-consuming to implement and probably hard to balance and make work well (see, for example, hordes). I'm not sure how best to do things in EU4 or dream-EU4. I think that if I were to indulge my inner sperg I'd have China be perpetually on the brink of collapse throughout the early part of this period as it lacks liquidity and has immense peasant unrest. Then you can jump the rails here by discovering the Americas and acquiring your own steady source of silver, or go historically and end up buying all of it from European traders. The critical problems with this are making an AI that can run on a perpetual disaster curve without collapsing (I'd like to call this the "truth-is-stranger-than-fiction" effect, and it's a fairly common occurrence in Paradox games) and the fact that this would need a more Victoria-esque trading system to really implement. So it's pretty easy to see why it isn't going to happen.  Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Maybe England shouldn't be able to do that with just a stab hit. Maybe changing government types should be difficult for everyone. I think that there should be a bigger distinction between the broader government types. "Upgrading" from despotism to feudalism to administration/absolutism/constitutionalism should be fairly easy, but going from monarchy to republic or vice versa should require something more drastic. Maybe even taking the decision to do it requires taking control of rebels for a while to try and overthrow the monarchy. More unique types can either feed into the broader trees at higher levels or have little trees of their own, or perhaps just stay unique. Quickedit: Being able to use imperial government should probably be a function of size and the number of distinct culture groups in your nation.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:50
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Question because I've never tried this in Divine Wind, but if you're playing Manchu and you successfully use the "Form China" decision (which IIRC requires owning Beijing and a few other northern provinces), do you suddenly start having Factions?
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Jan 29, 2013 04:02
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Effectronica posted:I think that there should be a bigger distinction between the broader government types. "Upgrading" from despotism to feudalism to administration/absolutism/constitutionalism should be fairly easy, but going from monarchy to republic or vice versa should require something more drastic. Maybe even taking the decision to do it requires taking control of rebels for a while to try and overthrow the monarchy. My problem with any rebel-takeover requirement is the player can always game these requirements by hanging back and letting a 2k rebel stack take over the capital while the 40k army does nothing because the player wants the new government form. I suppose players will always do gamey stuff and there's really not much you can do other than restrict revolutionaries to only revolt when the rebels have a certain % of the state's manpower but thankfully Paradox did mention the transition from Monarchy<->Republic will be harder in EUIV so hopefully that means you will need to do more extraordinary things to get the Most Serene Republic of Germany. E: Patter Song posted:Question because I've never tried this in Divine Wind, but if you're playing Manchu and you successfully use the "Form China" decision (which IIRC requires owning Beijing and a few other northern provinces), do you suddenly start having Factions? As I recall no, forming China removes them for Ming so Manchu shouldn't gain them.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:02
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I don't know how to take the claim that Europa is historical in any real way. It tries to a degree, but comes up short which is fairly understandable considering it is ultimately a sandbox game. Not a play out how history did game.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:08
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DrProsek posted:My problem with any rebel-takeover requirement is the player can always game these requirements by hanging back and letting a 2k rebel stack take over the capital while the 40k army does nothing because the player wants the new government form. I suppose players will always do gamey stuff and there's really not much you can do other than restrict revolutionaries to only revolt when the rebels have a certain % of the state's manpower but thankfully Paradox did mention the transition from Monarchy<->Republic will be harder in EUIV so hopefully that means you will need to do more extraordinary things to get the Most Serene Republic of Germany. I mean taking an active role. The player hits "Start the Revolution!" and they immediately lose control of the nation and take control of a freshly-spawned rebel stack. Conquering a province gives free units and access to manpower/construction. Regular units have a chance to flip control to the player based on stability, revolt risk, and provinces conquered. This probably isn't super-practical for small nations or would be easy to make hit the sweet spot between "trivial annoyance" and "horribly frustrating", though. CharlestheHammer posted:I don't know how to take the claim that Europa is historical in any real way. It tries to a degree, but comes up short which is fairly understandable considering it is ultimately a sandbox game. Not a play out how history did game. I said "looks like" history and is "roughly deterministic" for that reason- it's not very historical, but the broad course of the Europeans coming to dominate things will consistently happen without modding, even if Austria extends to Siberia and Burgundy, Scotland, and Navarre split North America between them. It's extremely rare to see any of the American nations survive without players directly controlling them and gaming the mechanics, China almost never does stuff and rarely did stuff before DW, etc. It's certainly not historical or highly deterministic, but it's not highly sandboxy either.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:28
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Effectronica posted:I mean taking an active role. The player hits "Start the Revolution!" and they immediately lose control of the nation and take control of a freshly-spawned rebel stack. Conquering a province gives free units and access to manpower/construction. Regular units have a chance to flip control to the player based on stability, revolt risk, and provinces conquered. This probably isn't super-practical for small nations or would be easy to make hit the sweet spot between "trivial annoyance" and "horribly frustrating", though.  .... I love this idea so much. It ties into bringing in the rebel nations from EU: Rome. If you have a tiny tax revolt fine, just use the classic "X assholes pop up in this province" rebellion, but if you get a big enough rebellion, they form the "X Rebels" nation. If the player wants the rebellion to win they switch over to the rebels, if not they stay and fight them. I suppose the player could still stick to the side of the ruling administration and then lose on purpose but it provides a way for the player to help a revolution win other than hang back and ignoring the 2K rebel stack.E: For OPMs I guess just always do the old rebel system, and reserve the X Rebel nation rebellions for people with 2+ provinces. burnishedfume fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 04:40
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Effectronica posted:I mean taking an active role. The player hits "Start the Revolution!" and they immediately lose control of the nation and take control of a freshly-spawned rebel stack. Conquering a province gives free units and access to manpower/construction. Regular units have a chance to flip control to the player based on stability, revolt risk, and provinces conquered. This probably isn't super-practical for small nations or would be easy to make hit the sweet spot between "trivial annoyance" and "horribly frustrating", though. At first I was really leery about this idea for the reasons you stated, but now that I think of it this could actually be a fun mechanic. It reminds me of Medieval:Total War a bit, where if there was a civil war you could choose to back the king or the rebels. It would make revolution a lot more meaningful, at the least.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:44
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Fister Roboto posted:4) The player should be able to say "gently caress this faction poo poo we're changing government forms to something reasonable" like literally every other country on the planet is able to. Papal States  But yeah I don't think the faction system was bad necessarily, just the execution was horribly unforgivable. It cannot be overstated just how steeped in tradition China was, the beauracracy was so complex that meaningful change was all but impossible and historically their own internal problems is what prevented them from going on an unstoppable train wreck of conquest. Not to say China shouldn't be able to change, they obviously did even if it was long after EU's time frame (but there were plenty of other times where it could have happened). but it should be damned harder than a lot of European countries, which is why factions should be fun and not a hindrance. I know it won't happen but I would like to see religious conversion a bit more open. As it stands you can't swap out of your religious group without being conquered, and while understandable it does sort of undermine that peaceful conversion across religious types did happen (Korea may not have gone full Christian, but they did a pretty close job at it). Sometimes a ruler has a change of heart and converts to something new, and it can influence their people. I think it should be possible albeit conversion chance is incredibly low.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:47
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Is there an easy way to edit a nation's mission? I'm playing as an Italian minor and I managed to take over Rome, but now mega-Castille has gotten a mission to restore the Holy See and it's basically game over for me. I loaded up as Castille but they can't cancel their mission for a few years.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:47
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I received it for free last week but I must admit I had only tried EU3 for a few minutes... but the level of rage in the last few pages of this thread has made me want to know more. You all are hysterical.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:57
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Every time I play EU3 I end up losing tons of prestige randomly for no reason all the time. Still not sure why.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:57
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Zip posted:I received it for free last week but I must admit I had only tried EU3 for a few minutes... Oh, that reminds me. It turns out the guy I was going to give my free copy to already had it. If there's still someone else out there who wants EUIII drop me a PM.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:59
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Raneman posted:Every time I play EU3 I end up losing tons of prestige randomly for no reason all the time. Still not sure why. Can you give an example of what was happening in your game before it started dropping?
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Jan 29, 2013 05:07
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RagnarokAngel posted:
It does make the (relatively few) times an actual people converted outside of their religion group in the EU3 timeframe kind of weird in the history files: the Oirats/Dzungars going from Tengriist Shamanism to Buddhism, and the Kongo and Cherokee adopting Christianity. They just suddenly change. Speaking of the Oirats/Dzungars and related to our China discussion, here's a people that became quite the powerhouse towards the middle of the timeframe (the Dzungar Empire was pretty impressive and formidable in the 17th century, and Ming never really challenged them: it wasn't until the Qing and the Russians basically agreed to partition eastern Asia between them that the Dzungars were truly doomed), but never never never survives to the date that it was at its height due to being annex=yes and constantly DOWing Ming thanks to the horde mechanic.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:09
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Bold Robot posted:Is there an easy way to edit a nation's mission? I'm playing as an Italian minor and I managed to take over Rome, but now mega-Castille has gotten a mission to restore the Holy See and it's basically game over for me. I loaded up as Castille but they can't cancel their mission for a few years. There's an active_mission in the save down by the countries relationships and previous monarchs. I'm not sure what editing it to be blank would do, but you could always change the date they last cancelled a mission which is also there, then cancel it in game. You'll probably want to disable the mission as well, or you'll just have the same problem again in a few years. When I modded in the Commune of Rome, I had to get rid of it just to stop France doing the same thing every chance they got.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:10
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RagnarokAngel posted:I know it won't happen but I would like to see religious conversion a bit more open. As it stands you can't swap out of your religious group without being conquered, and while understandable it does sort of undermine that peaceful conversion across religious types did happen (Korea may not have gone full Christian, but they did a pretty close job at it). Sometimes a ruler has a change of heart and converts to something new, and it can influence their people. I think it should be possible albeit conversion chance is incredibly low. While Steppe Wolfe-like "I want to play Buddhist Germany now kthnx" should be impossible I think opening up cross religious-group conversion beyond specific instances should be possible. One possibility is to actually allow Germany to just decide to become Buddhist but that kind of swift conversion across groups with no primary or accepted culture provinces of that religion or group, no borders with nations of that religion or group, and if it applies, a religiously homogenous population, that conversion should be devastating and reduce your Germany back down to an OPM unless you get lucky and Germans are exceedingly sympathetic to the Kaiser's conversion (like 1% chance to get the "All the Germans convert to the new faith!" event, and ~3% chance for an event that even converts some Germans, with by far the most likely event being "Germans are loving pissed"). burnishedfume fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 05:17
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Fintilgin posted:Oh no. Europa Universalis the board game had two maps, if I remember correctly. A Europe map and a 'Rest of the World' map. I have a copy in the basement I can haul up if need be. How DOES the actual board game play, incidentally?
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Jan 29, 2013 05:17
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Wasn't it so that once you got your sliders balanced a certain way, you could essentially dictate which faction was in power via decisions with Ming?
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Jan 29, 2013 05:21
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Fintilgin posted:Oh no. Europa Universalis the board game had two maps, if I remember correctly. A Europe map and a 'Rest of the World' map. I have a copy in the basement I can haul up if need be. Yep, my mistake. I found the other map:  Still insisting that the name is not an excuse, and that the board game doesn't really give a poo poo about anything outside Europe.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:25
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The names not an excuse, its like the dumb "Its crusader Kings not Jihad Sultans" thing all over again.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:30
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Names count for alot. But the DLC was called something something islam.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:32
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Tomn posted:How DOES the actual board game play, incidentally? Search me! Mine's unpunched. I bought it mostly as a curiosity, out of love for EUII, and the lack of a gaming club (don't think it would be to my wife's taste), the impenetrable translated from French manual, and the fact that I had a vastly fancier version with AI on my computer kept me from doing anything other then looking at it. In fact, I've pretty much stopped buying board wargames entirely, because I never actually get to playing them anymore, and I realized that I was really just sort of... collecting them.  EDIT: I assume some of the Paradox guys (Johan?) MUST have played it, because they like it enough to make the computer adaptation.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:41
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RagnarokAngel posted:I know it won't happen but I would like to see religious conversion a bit more open. As it stands you can't swap out of your religious group without being conquered, and while understandable it does sort of undermine that peaceful conversion across religious types did happen (Korea may not have gone full Christian, but they did a pretty close job at it). Sometimes a ruler has a change of heart and converts to something new, and it can influence their people. I think it should be possible albeit conversion chance is incredibly low. Perhaps some sort of system that allows for other nations to extend some religious influence or something? Like Portugal could expand religious influence towards some Japanese nation at the cost of some (lots of?) Missionaries and Diplomats, or at the same time if Algiers or Morocco end up extraordinarily strong and/or get significant gains in Iberia, they could do the same to Castille/Aragon/Portugal/Galicia/whatever. Maybe just a general "powerful Empire can expand some religious influence to other nations" kind of thing? Might lead to some interesting semi-plausible twists, like if the Ottoman Empire makes gains further than the Balkans they could start throwing some religious influence into Poland or even Austria.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:48
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Bold Robot posted:Is there an easy way to edit a nation's mission? I'm playing as an Italian minor and I managed to take over Rome, but now mega-Castille has gotten a mission to restore the Holy See and it's basically game over for me. I loaded up as Castille but they can't cancel their mission for a few years. Since you're already open to tag switching and save editing, it is pretty easy. Just go find castille's entry in the save file (searching for primary_culture=castillian should do it pretty quickly). Then find the line that says last_mission_cancel or something like that. Change the date so it's before the current date, and you'll be able to cancel Castille's mission. This is because that field is misleadingly named, and actually just sets the date when you can next cancel a mission.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:49
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Bold Robot posted:Is there an easy way to edit a nation's mission? I'm playing as an Italian minor and I managed to take over Rome, but now mega-Castille has gotten a mission to restore the Holy See and it's basically game over for me. I loaded up as Castille but they can't cancel their mission for a few years. 0. Pause the game (space bar) 1. Open up the console (`) 2. Swap to Castile (tag CAS) 3. Change their mission (mission build_colony_to_city) 4. Swap back to your country (tag PIS/TUS/SIE/URB/MLO/whatever) 5. Unpause, Castile now either has a mission to build up one of their colonies to a city, or will get a random mission from the available ones. I like using build_colony_to_city because it's easy to remember, and easy to type. NihilVerumNisiMors posted:Wasn't it so that once you got your sliders balanced a certain way, you could essentially dictate which faction was in power via decisions with Ming? Yes. You can get the sliders balanced so that no specific faction has a bonus, but your ruler stats can and will change that balance. Every time you get a new monarch you'll need to re-adjust your sliders to make them balance again.
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Jan 29, 2013 05:54
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