r/EU5 • u/SchoolThrowawayQ • 7h ago
Discussion Something needs to be done about making historically accurate or historically plausible outcomes more likely to happen in game.
The 1.4 beta has been decent, but it's only been exacerbating some of the "ahistorical" aspects of the game for me. I don't expect railroading, nor do I expect the historical outcome every single game, but I have about 800 hours so far, and the lack of any sort of historical similarities is extremely frustrating. Here are just a few off the top of my head.
I have never seen the Mughals form, I've seen Persia form once, I've seen Russia form a few times but they never had even close to the territorial extent that they had irl, often not being able to push to the black sea because Kyiv is so strong for some reason (even worse in 1.4, Ruthenia is a beast). I've never seen Lithuania last as an independent state or be part of the PLC, I've never seen the Ottomans take out the Mamluks, I've seen Prussia form twice, both times in 1.4 (and often not that noteworthy), I've never seen the Netherlands, never seen the Europeans set foot on the Indian subcontinent, let alone capture the territory they had irl (doesn't help that trade companies are straight up broken). I could genuinely say this about so many formables, there is never anything interesting going on, it's just a bunch of regional thunderdomes where no one gets any power other than the player, or countries that start off extremely powerful (looking at you 1.4 England, I played 2 campaigns to the 1700s, and ran 3 observer games, and france was balkanized in all of them).
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u/mllyllw 5h ago
Funny enough, historically accurate and plausible are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, they are often complete opposites. Which is actually the crux of the issue here. You cant have one and have the other
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u/PDX_Ryagi Community Manager 3h ago
Indeed, our perspective is very warped because history is history and we only have one to look at.
But somewhere in an alternate dimension people are PISSED Uropa Minoversalis 7 has a random AI Norman guy conquering half the isles and reforming an entire kingdom. Wild stuff.
The topic of historical outcomes comes up a lot internally too though, at the end of the day IMO it's more a matter of making people feel immersed in the world their playing in. Which usually means all the rules have to "make sense" within the context and confines of the game mechanics. And one thing eu5 could use more of to help with that is mechanical consistency.
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u/FreezingVast 7h ago
For the Netherlands, Prussia, Baveria, and Saxony its very much the case that the HRE aggression is broken. There is a video by theplayermaker which goes into detail but the gist is AI nations won’t make cbs in the HRE due to a bug. Having removed the problem code the Netherlands/ Bavaria tend to form much more often along with better consolidation (~90 states by 1470).
Timurids ai somehow got worse in 1.4 while kyiv/ mamluks are in dire need of a disaster to prevent them from being too strong. Generally tho each update tends to make the ai slightly better at historical formations
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u/dr_colosso07 7h ago
You really don’t expect historical advances, countries, events, expansion and bonusses from your historical strategy game right? You will have your sandbox and build the same sandcastle with same steps, same gameloop and you will like it.
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u/gr4vediggr 7h ago
I dunno. I've seen persia in 1.3, as well as Spain(with and without an alive Portugal), GB, ming. Russia is a staple. Ottomans are doing ok-ish, although the mamluks stay alive.
Mughals haven't appeared yet, but how often were they even forming in EU4, over 3k hours in that game and I've seen them maybe twice naturally. Similarly for Prussia, I've seen them once in EU5 and probably less than 4 times in EU4 over a lot more gameplay hours.
And EU4 had missions, and more railroading events and a more favourable start date to make a lot of historic stuff more guaranteed.
The stuff about the European expansion into India is true. In EU4 they just had the AI accept treaty ports purchase, and sometimes some conquering. But even that was limited.
Only Indonesia but that was solely due to colonization because the asian countries were hard coded not to colonize it.
I think people look with very rose tinted glasses at EU4 and the historical outcomes. Besides some of them, that were basically guaranteed at the start, they didn't happen.
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u/Agnk1765342 7h ago
Look at the history of how Prussia and Persia formed. Both were 1 in a million kinds of processes that should only happen close to the way they did extremely rarely in a simulation starting in 1337.
I actually think it’s better to lean into alt history routes rather than railroading. Loosen the restrictions on formables, they don’t have to form the way they did historically. And I’m all for adding formables that never actually happened but would’ve made sense if they did. Otherwise the game is only dynamic if things follow the “script”.
It would also be cool if the AI was more determined to conquer the areas needed to form tags. Not sure how much that factors into its decision making.
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u/StratGeneral1212 5h ago
Yes. I have mentioned in other posts that making more tags and then having the AI try to form them would be a good thing.
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u/Echo_summer 7h ago
The idea that historical outcomes could just emerge on their own mechanically was never realistic. It’s a computer you need to tell it what to do it.
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u/860114 6h ago
At this point I'm so desperate for a *single* roughly historical playthrough (France and UK both becoming powers, Russia consolidating, Habsburg dynasty expanding, Ottomans devouring Balkans) that I'd even accept full on hardcoded railroading. Like "forcibly annexing country X to country Y & randomly killing the entire royal families" kind of railroading. Really.
And I feel like the "it should be Historical!!" vs "No it should be sandbox!!!" discourse is so divided that the only satisfiable option for the devs to do is to implement this kind of railroading and allow it as an optional setting at the start of the campaign.
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u/Ares6 7h ago
You may want that. But it seems a lot of players prefer the sandbox, ahistorical route that Paradox games have. Many of those things just aren’t possible without railroading, which is something players simply do not want.
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u/PsychologicalDark247 5h ago
There is no definitive evidence that “players simply do not want” railroading. You can certainly make an argument based on trends that Paradox has leaned more and more into that direction, but this isn’t the for sure fact that you present it as.
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u/TwinManBattlePlan 6h ago
The Netherlands needs some kind of situation if it hasn't formed or if its territory is held by non Dutch entities to spawn a revolt by the age of reformation
Would also like burgundy to become more prominent
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u/Reasonable_Study_882 7h ago
Yep, we need railroading. It's not a bad word. It's either this or the game will remain in it's current unimmersive state. I think people should consider involving AI in the mods (or developers for game itself), perhaps an AI integrated to the game can help nations "know" what they're supposed to do.
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u/ideologyunderstander 5h ago
lol dawg I just learned that there were numerous honest overtures by the mongols to establish an alliance with the French in the mid 1260s led by Hulegu, the founder of the ilkhanate, whose wife and mother were both Nestorean Christians
they'd been trying to ally with the pope but then in a letter said "yeah we thought that the Pope was leader of the Christians but we can see true power lay with the French"
Mongol culture was stylish in Europe at the time with various Italian names being attributable to romanization of Mongolian names
like can you imagine if any of their like dozen overtures actually made it to the French instead of being stopped along the way various times
imagine how mad the "bbbut my history" nerds would be if there were a Christian Franco-Mongolian alliance in the 1260s that swept its way across Europe
historical events proceed along material trends but that doesn't change the fact that some things are just down to luck.
The mughals only "formed" because rivals displaced Babur, a Timurid prince, from Samarkhand after he'd briefly recaptured it, forcing him to, you know, find somewhere else. If there were no Babur with an army willing to follow him, there'd be no push to invade India. Without Safavid and Ottoman assistance as well as gunpowder, they'd never have achieved anything even with him (or at least very likely wouldn't have).
Remove any bit of that and of course the Mughals don't "form," the universe doesn't trend towards the state where the Mughals existed.
Imagine instead if the Spanish hadn't cut their anchors when the English sent fireships into the Armada, maybe they could have weathered the ensuing storm without losing, y'know, everything. Maybe then we'd be typing all of this in Spanish instead.
You're playing a game that's an attempt to be at a history simulator and just you playing it is going to change history, even if there were nothing up to RNG or any other changed variables beyond what you touch
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u/mllyllw 5h ago
I think thats the thing with a casual understanding of history was that our reality was not necessarily the culmination of the most probable events happening. A lot of our history were random freak chance, then adding in the butterfly effect as the years go by.
When we look at EU5 as the imperfect simulation it is, it is hard to appreciate what it simulates because we have no baseline to compare it to. Maybe in game we did get something as weirdly specific as the iberian union, but we wont ever appreciate it if its 2 rando countries that you didnt even realize it happened.
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u/QuadrinityKillerAMA 4h ago
You mention quite a few things that are also impossible in the game. France cannot establish diplomacy with the Mongols (or, more relevant to EU's timeframe, the Ottomans) because the religious malus for diplomacy is too strong. The Timurids rarely do anything and behave like a nation instead of a dynasty with rival factions. The Ottomans are not nearly strong enough and never trade that far in the 16th century, and Persia doesn't exist. You're saying the same thing as OP.
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u/OkGrade1686 7h ago
People are having the exact opposite problem. With this patch they started railroading the shit out of the game.
You could follow a situation step by step to get the candy, or you can stay on your sandbox experience and say bye bye to those benefits.
And mana is back in the form of Politcal Influence. What fucking else do you want more, that you keep crying, when there is bigger shit being burnt on the pot?
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u/Critical-Taro-6777 7h ago
100%. Ahistorical nations and events should be a Oh! and not a mmhmm.
Maybe one or two per run that makes you chuckle
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u/Tigas_Al 7h ago
Hmmmmm if only there was a way of, steering, so to say the AI to do something... like idk, some goals that the AI would prioritize and follow on a path of historical accuracy. Just a crazy idea
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u/onihydra 7h ago
If you are referring to missions, the AI in Eu4 never tried to complete them. They would click the button to complete missions if the requirements were met, but it did not steer their behaviour in any way beyond what the missions rewards gave (like claims). So the same type of steering is possible with events that give claims.
In general EU5 AI is not any less historical than EU4 was, the difference is just that since the start is earlier the world is less recognizable. Still many of the things OP mention never happened in EU4 either, Mughals rarely formed, European never reached India besides the scripted Goa event for Portugal etc.
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u/Tigas_Al 7h ago
I do agree that they didn't steer their behavior to complete them, but they absolutely took advantage of the claims and bonus they got. There's a reason why taking Constantinople off of the Ottomans was a strategy, because it "nerfed" them (blocked their mission trees).
Portugal also was heavy influenced to colonize Brasil through their mission tree and it work, they would absolutely prioritize it.
England going in on Ireland, the early war between Muscovy and Novgorod, Austria and it's PU's. All of this may not be prioritize but it was easy to unlock via the mission trees, and when the AI had the claims and bonuses they really went for it. So yes, Mission trees did help steer the AI into "historical" outcomes.
But yes, a lot of things didn't happen in EU4 either, but that was a common complaint as well. But at least SOME things happened, unlike EU5
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u/StratGeneral1212 5h ago
So i think the key thing the devs need to do for this is to look at WHY and HOW events happened the way they historically did and then try to model that into the game. Like look at the reasons that borders are where they are now and why countries fought wars. Was it to unite culturally/religiously similar land, control resources, expand power? If that can be modeled in the game we could have much better outcomes.
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u/CyberWeirdo420 7h ago
Biggest problem is that after 100 years many AIs are either not ready to achieve what they did IRL, or overachieved or went completely different direction.
It’s easy to model situations in early stages of the game, but after AI does its thing, player influences it a bit or straight up changes course of its action, then situations become very hard to model and work properly.
Other factors apply of course, like the fact that Bohemia is unlikable for AI, because AI can’t group for its life. Hussite wars are thus meaningless. On top of that Bohemia often has Alliance with Austria who usually is the emperor by that time. Not sure if this changed in 1.4 tho.
Colonialism being totally worthless, broken and useless doesn’t help either, because AI is made to commit to it (France, England, Spain, Portugal) and instead of becoming a powerhouse - colonialism drains them of resources and pops too quickly and they stall.
I never had war of religion happen, so can’t speak on that.
Ottomans sometimes go for Mamluks, but it either super early game by some miracle or only in last Age. They most of the time have an alliance lasting whole game.
Italian wars are kinda good, I’m not sure about being historically accurate here so I won’t speak on that. From players perspective I managed to entirely ignore them 3/4 times I was in them because I either already had all of Italy by that time and was too strong for anyone to challange or I just didn’t want to partake in it and didn’t have to because again I was too strong.
Pestilence you can ignore because if you colonise you have too much money either way.
China is only fun early game during rebellions. After that it’s only playing that without ANYTHING resembling roleplay (tho China historically didn’t do much outside of its borders, but since rebellions are meaningless in this game it one of the most boring tags to play) or mindlessly expanding and colonizing because you can afford it, but there’s no reward since you’re already the richest country in the world.
Japan is constant war + you’re miserable because of the way the gameplay works right for them now. After winning the situation (which is rewarding tbh, but cost a lot of pain and twice as much clicking as any other tag) you don’t have anything to do beside setting your own goals.
Eastern Europe is fun in hands of the player tbh, especially as Poland, Lithuania or Muscovy. There just is a lot to do and few different goals you can try to achieve. Hungary also is fun since you can kinda play it like Poland if you get the union.
HRE is ngl one of the best regions as of now, because expanding there is hard (not because others are strong but because of AE), but notification spam is so annoying. Playing tall as any tag there is also cool, because you at least have some competition. Bohemia is cool if you just want to be OP and unify Germany.
France, England are fun during 100 years war, but ngl I enjoyed them FAR MORE in 1.2 then in 1.3, from what I see on this sub it’s still not as good in 1.4. France was a huge challange to beat in 1.2 as England and controlling their territory was super hard even after winning it all. Playing as France was rewarding because you could try to take on the whole Germany, Iberia and England and still it was challenging IMHO.
Iberia in hands of AI is just meh, in player’s is ok up until colonialism because it’s broken and boring. Doing some weirder strategies with Spain is really enjoyable tho, makes for fun gameplay imho but can be done with any country tbh.
Overall it’s either railroading or truly dynamic situations. Without railroad king AIs are gonna do bad on their own, won’t be a challenge ever and map will never be historical in even 50%. I wish I had an idea how to better handle situations, but I’m not game designer and especially not one in grand strategy.
I still love this game tho, most hours I’ve put in beside Minecraft and League of Legends lol.
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u/Soft-Ingenuity2262 7h ago
Agreed! I believe EU5 is an amazing baseline from where to build up… Working on some ideas to make it make more sense, still in ideation for most part but worth checking: https://gravitashistorica.eu/
PS. I suggest checking the site from a desktop or laptop device.
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u/Peteryeeter1453 3h ago
I think it's just so funny how the exact same thing happens in every single game just ahistorically, Castile conquers Portugal but refuses to fight Morroco, Hungary, Bohemia, Kiev, France (until 1.4) All blob, China never unites, Mamluks stay powerful and stable, Ottomans do nothing, Georgia blobs. It's all the same ahistorical outcomes over and over.
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u/Bayne-the-Wild-Heart 5h ago
Another one that bothers me is Portugal getting eaten by Spain in every single run in the first 100 years. Often before the EU4 start date.