Oh, cool beans, thanks!
In ten years I bet we still won’t have EU5, and while playing EU4 half of the screen will be taken up by the UI displaying numbers for different mechanics they’ve added over time.
Anyway, it looks like a monk type character to me. The bar is also wider than a standard one so I doubt that it’ll just be one number. The fact that it is below the merchants / colonists / diplomats / missionaries could mean that numbers in the new bar will slot underneath? Perhaps a different version of each agent can be obtained which does different stuff. Not sure.
Maybe it’s a type of character who can switch roles between Merchant, Settler, Diplomat, and, uh, whatever the fourth guy is. So you could potentially spend points to turn him into a Diplomat at one point, and when things calm down on that front, you could flip him into a Merchant.
Or maybe it’s a new class of ninja monks.
Could go either way.
Priests.
Maybe artisan? Music/Art etc.
I like your thinking @jpinard
After all, culture converting provinces is a fairly mundane effort that would do well to be fleshed out. Even potentially redo one of the idea groups to go with it.
On mobile so have to do a quick link to the dev diary:
The new mechanic they’re adding is Ages (i.e. Age of Discovery). Different objectives and powers can be triggered in each age, and certain countries get special bonuses available for a particular age, if they’re able to trigger them. Ottomans can get 33% Siege Ability in the first age, for instance.
They’re also adding the idea of a 50-year Golden Age. More info in the link, where Johan discusses the Age of Discovery. I set the link to show Dev responses only, as he added a few more clarifications and other bits of info.
The very first thing, and I do mean the first, that stood out to me was Age of Discovery 1400-1530. I thought…
But then I see Johan’s last response. Ah, well. Didn’t actually think that was likely, for CKII reasons, but a boy can dream. Still this makes a nice even 90 years per age, though Age of Discovery gets shorted 4, and Age of Revolution gets a bonus 20.
I like the possibility of having the game rules change in the different ages, and clearly there is the potential to give each age a distinct flavor. I’m not so hot on having fixed years for the transitions. You’d think the boundaries between ages would be driven by events in the game and perhaps be a bit fuzzy, like they made the institutions.
That’s the next DLC :-)
Ah yes. How thin can they slice the salami :)
It looks ok. I like that the objectives give players concrete goals and a direction if they need it. Not sure how I feel about yet another currency added to the game, this time “splendour”.
I never use to agree with these people, but I am really starting to think that Paradox should just let EU4 go and put the remaining team onto one of the new projects or something.
The objectives of this new system should really be integrated and combined with the missions system to form the place to give players a direction based on the country they are playing, the time period they are playing in, and also give them some choice over it. It also should not rely on hard dates, which was noted above. That’s really sloppy and to me goes against the whole philosophy of EU4 being more of a sandbox. Previous EU games had alot of hardcoded events/things around dates, I was happy to see EU4 less reliant on such things.
I can agree with the not being in favor of hard dates @Tim_N. You would think, with Institutions, that this could easily be tied to their spread. After all the Renaissance doesn’t make sense to flip at a hard date if you are still riding around as a horde with the Timurids.
Honestly aren’t these ages the exact same thing as institutions just with hard dates and a smaller number of them? Maybe I missed something. They could have spruced up the missions part of the game to have objectives that are tied to the institutions that you have already embraced, e.g. found a colony when you have embraced colonialism, to achieve the same effect as these ages.
Was this supposed to be what they teased as the biggest new feature added since the game was released?
The institutions were mostly about reworking (eliminating) the idea of Tech Groups and replacing it with a more organic system. The intent of Ages appears to give different periods of the game individual goals and mechanics, as well as provide peaks/flavor to major players (i.e. the Ottoman’s increased ability to siege for the first part of the game). I don’t really see them as being the same effect or intent as institutions.
We likely won’t have a clear picture of what this all means until they’ve at least gone over the details of each of the four Ages.
Perhaps I should elaborate a bit on my impressions. As you said ages provide goals and effects for four parts of the game, representing the different tenors within the games very long timespan. Institutions also provide effects relating to the different tenors within the games very long timespan, while the missions screen provide goals to the player.
The three differences that I can see between age effects and institutions are: 1) Age effects are time-limited, 2) Age effects are universal while institution effects are specific to the countries that have embraced it, and 3) Age effects always fire within specific time frames.
- can easily be achieved in the institutions screen by adding effects like: “For 50 years after embracing colonialism +X to Y”. I don’t think 2) makes any sense. For instance, why should countries get added unrest during the Age of Revolution (hypothetically say) when their people are still living like it was the year 1500. Victoria 2 modelled this very well using consciousness. The effects should be country-specific in my view, based on the types of institutions that the country has embraced. 3) is a step backwards as well given institution effects fire more dynamically (although they too have floor dates to stop silly things from happening).
I think the missions screen is ripe for improvement. You could have more mission chains that lead to substantial changes to the character of the country, you could tie missions to certain time periods (which I believe they already do to some extent), so when the country has embraced colonialism you get colonialism-flavoured missions and goals, giving suitable bonuses. Missions are also occasionally specific to the country or country groups. So you could easily recreate the time-limited Ottomans bonus to siege ability or the portugese +colony growth ability with missions and institutions.
I’m not trying to argue that the additions are useless, I would just like to see Paradox replace/enhance/expand existing screens/currencies instead of just creating new ones. You could remove the new Ages screen and the new currency splendour and instead expand on institutions and missions. Isn’t that better design? I won’t pretend to know much about game design but I would have thought if something could be achieved with less clutter it should be the better way to go.
Well, to my mind, I’m pretty comfortable with the Ages and Institutions being separate and distinct mechanics on their own. I do think that from what they’ve said so far, perhaps they could be merged together, but I’m not sure if that is inherently better. Institutions seem to be about the spread of (for lack of better words) enlightenment and progress, whereas Ages to me represent distinct periods in history. One is more dynamic and sandbox, the other is more historical, and I think the game’s strength is dipping into both.
I will say that, thus far, it does seem a very Euro-centric feature/expansion. I don’t have any qualms with that, though, as it’s kind of right there on the tin (even though I play a lot of my games in ROTW). :) To me, Institutions are a cool dynamic mechanic and you can try to control the flow of technology. The Ages to me represent historically themed periods where mechanics of the game differ, and you have boundaries where you need to figure out how to achieve your goals within the timeframe. I think both approaches (dynamic vs static) can bring different things to the table, and that’s why I’m comfortable with them being two different things.
Don’t get me wrong, Tim, I get what you’re saying. There’s something to be said for streamlining design and not letting the garden grow wild, which it can feel like with so many expansions. I think I’m going to reserve more judgement until they’ve had the chance to lay out the various Ages and explain the other features that this expansion is going to introduce. Given that it’s the first real dev diary for a new expansion, my view on the design is really limited!
The little teaser image of ship models they posted today hints at the next expansion (finally!) focusing on the Far East.
What a bunch of junk,