Too long for me to get through it all in one go, but I've just finished Part One and I gotta say this is shaping up to be a really impressive and thoughtful video. I hope the algorithm is kind to you!
Really enjoyed watching the video, and I completely agree with your analysis of the mechanics in EU4. I absolutely love the game-it's probably my most played title-but for a game that prides itself on historical accuracy, the development mechanic is one of the most absurd features in any Paradox game. The fact that, with enough monarch points, I can turn the deserts of Libya into one of the world's biggest cities in a single day will never stop being funny to me. I also find it interesting that the changes to the institutions system and AI development have made it so there’s rarely a tech disparity after the 1600s. When I play as Great Britain and conquer land in Asia or Africa, the game clearly wants and expects these regions to be behind in tech-but they almost never are. As you mentioned, the game has a very Eurocentric worldview, and the institutions and tech systems seem designed to ensure Europe stays ahead in tech. It’s interesting to me that the mechanics fail to create this experience. What’s even more interesting is that, despite this being an apparent 'issue,' the developers haven’t addressed it in any way. Lastly as a fun tidbit, sometime during Eu4s post-launch development paradox intended to a fully functional pop system to replace development, but it turned out to be too much work to implement. It would have been interesting to see how a pop system would have addressed some of the issues you brought up in parts 2 and 3, but I guess we will have to wait to EU5. But overall great video and thoughtful analysis, and I'm looking forward to watching your EU5 analysis in 10 years.
I am actually watching this now as someone who played everything from paradox except from EU4. For some reason theme never resonated with me but this may be a good way to see if I change my opinion
wow I thought I'd just put on some sludge in the background while I study but this is astonishingly well made. I'm not really sociologically minded, but I do recognise some of these ideas from Illusions of progress by georges sorel - you should check it out sometime. I wouldn't personally place as much of an emphasis on the supposed negative cultural impact of today's grand strategy games, though. They really are just games at the end of the day, and I appreciate them as the flawed starting-off points for learning modern era history that they are. The players will always bring their cultural and educational biases to the table, and it'd be hard to start straight up lecturing them. So far, we could've done waay worse than paradox and civ, but, of course, let's hope eu5 does acknowledge this critical approach.
Thanks for the kind words! I p much agree. It’s not like eu4 is corrupting the minds of the masses, more like it’s just one more source of media propagating certain narratives (possibly ironically? Possibly for roleplay? Who knows). I just find it interesting to examine. Some things actually bother me but for the most part yeah it’s definitely not the worst thing. If it was, I would’ve stopped playing long ago. At the same time, I’m not sure if I would be as interested in the game if I learned about it today, in large part due to the narratives I critiqued
I think the Mingsplosion, one of the laziest and most nonsensical constants in the game, shows how heavily the game embodies Eurocentrism at the cost of non European states, and this is largely due to player insistence. Eurocentrism beget Eurocentrism. I also think the model of state formation which prevents a multitude of significant real world historical states from existing such as the Maratha Confederacy, exists on a European model that fails even to serve Europe - you can't form Belgium in EU4 etc.
I think the Dhimmi is more about Jewish and Orthodox Christian scholars than Catholic Christian scholars as their influence in translating Greek and Roman era texts and the diversity of thought is what is pointed to as a significant factor of the "Islamic Golden Age"
1:53:33 Those are the tech groups that haven't embraced Feudalism at the start of the game and thus have a +50% tech cost. They don't have any modifiers on embracing institutions.
I remember a time when it was far more common for institutions to spawn outside europe. around emperor/leviathan/domination not sure where it started or stopped being a thing. I liked that. and my greatest hope for EU5 is dynamic trade. I don't like how all trade flows to and ends up in europe. that shouldn't happen if my player empire is by far #1 great power, I should be able to pull trade the other direction if I want to. for me the eurore centrism is definitely why I play more in europe than outside of. if I can spawn institutions outside europe consistently, and pull trade from europe to asia, africa or even america. I would rarely play in europe.
I really hope some of the main themes of this video reach the designers of eu5/project Ceasar which is currently under development. As a late player of the game some of the mechanics based on location were extremely frustrating and didn't make sense in the context of the run.
I'm sorry I don't have time to watch more than a hour of your video, first of all, that's a huge work and I respect that, now I have quite some things to say about some points : - Eu4 is heavely centered around Europe, you're perfectly right, it could be better not only for a representation but also for a gameplay perspective. - It's been a hour and the main point of this video is violence and domination is bad, wich is to say the least itself heavely eurocentric take, many cultures and people considered war, massacres and domination as the sole perspective and pupose of existence (the mongols used a massive massacre doctrine to frighten and dominate other peoples, the muslims had a record of more than a thousand years of slavery and heavy tax based on origin and religion, the Aztecs litteraly murduring vanquished soldiers of dominated vassals states) - World it self is a 0 sum game if you consider territory, you could have provinces as little as pavement on a street and yet if you control it and it's ressources no one does, what happpen if you control all of this pavement ? You dominate/control the world (and the same applies to opponents/rivals) Let's take a real life exemple, France did wage war and expand around europe at the expense of other powers, whilst Italian states didn't much expand (didn't prevent them to wage war tho) and the nation that obtained the most power was France (and I'm talking prior Italian unification which by essence is an expension by war) Eu4 is'nt perfect, but it does pretty well at depicting what happened and be fun to play, werehas games such as Victoria 3 are more realistic when it comes tobthe control of a nation (very little ability to declare any type of reform without having half of your country defecting in months, don't have control over the armies, generals do...) But I find very boring Vic3 compared to Eu4 precisly because of that, I know it's subjective but having more control is what makes me play this game instead of the most recent such as Vic3 or CK3. And I would like to conclude that it's easy to say it's "just a game", but I also think it's pretty easy to say "voilence and domination is bad" there is a reason why many rules across history even outside Europe ruled by the motto "si vis pacem para bellum" roughly translated to "one who wants peace goes/prepare to war"
Ok so I do think you missed talking about the game difficulties and Iron Man, which is a big annoying explicit design feature and community expectation that I think has space for discussion, but it's impressive that pre setup options like that, custom nations and settings are really the only thing you missed. Very solid comprehensive review. I think the tension between the historical more racist approaches and the present not as racist approaches comes down to having more and more staff and even leads who are more and more opposed to the racism of the easier Eurocentric approaches, and it would be more consistent if the entire game released when Lions of the North did, etc
It’s true, but I still feel like for example the origins DLC has a super orientalist vibe, even the literal name. Overall though they clearly *tried* to move past at least some of those framings. Not sure how successfully tbh. As for difficulty, I had a section planned to talk about stuff like difficulty, in-game score, the ledger, province history and ruler histories and music but ultimately I thought i didn’t have enough to say at high enough quality to include it.
@thatguyZako I really don't think they ended it, haven't followed EU5 development because that would take effort, but I do think they improved - I also think Orientalism is more complicated than the pop culture understanding/the book put it
This is like a 5 hour Rosencreutz video, which I'll assume you'd take as a compliment. I fully disagree with your interpretation of the game, and especially the politics that are the lens with which you view the game. EU4 would not benefit from being less Euro-centric. The game's original vision is about the rise of nation states in Europe, and their subsequent conquest of the world. Expanding the scope of the game to properly represent the philosophies of the rest of the world is unviable. Clearly, you had fun playing this game, or else you wouldn't have put a comical amount of time into it, or this video. It would be far less fun if development time was spent on making the game fit all countries rather than focusing on the gameplay styles that the core of the gameplay is about.
I mean, we might disagree that the game would benefit from being less Eurocentric, which is more or less speculation, but aside from that it sounds like we totally agree about the game as a phenomenon, it’s goals and how it achieves those goals
I won't speak on your politics, but as for me, I have zero problem with a European company making a game about Europe for Europeans. That's pretty much the most normal thing that can happen, and like you said its the most narratively central part of the game. My problem only starts when the treatment of the rest of the world at times falls into stereotypes, or notions of inferiority. My issue isn't 'what' the game is about (europe) it's more 'how' (by making almost everyone else seem at times homogenous, at times nonexistent, at times inferior).
@ I just think that it's much more efficient use of development time to embrace the game's innate euro-centrism rather than to devote time trying to make countries that don't match the gameplay loop work. The core systems just don't work for a lot of the world during this era, and I'd argue it's not worth trying to fix. I would prefer, for instance, PDS to make a generic disaster akin to the English Civil War, where the nobility revolts against a king who is acting too absolutist relative to the amount of control he has (a better Court and Country, essentially), rather than attempting to make Siberian tribes or Tibetan minors better represent how the region was in the era. This generic disaster would be relevant for almost all players in almost every campaign and better represent the conflict between monarchs and privileged nobility, whereas the changes in Siberia and Tibet would really only affect players conquering those regions as Russia, India, or China. I think you put too much emphasis on the cultural impact of EU4's framing. Most players already subscribed to the Guns, Germs, and Steel interpretation or are familiar with its counterarguments. A game has to make sacrifices and abstractions for the sake of fun, and the euro-centric design of EU4 simplified the era enough to be a game that is simpler to develop and fun to play.
We make the games, you make the stories.
Thanks for playing 💙
someone from corporate forgot to watch the video
Critique is a labor of love ;)
209 view 5 hour eu4 retropectovr from a 400 sub channel. We have never been more back.
Enjoy my yt premium watchtime cus imma binge this over the day
589 views
@@sheamynoce99 unfortunately he's for sure not monetized but hopefully this video can get him the subs and watch time to get there
Holy shit. The amount of work that you probably put into this is insane. Goat
Awesome video! I've been doing a lot of thinking about GSG design and this set the gears spinning again, brought some interesting thoughts, thanks!
Keep em coming!!
Too long for me to get through it all in one go, but I've just finished Part One and I gotta say this is shaping up to be a really impressive and thoughtful video. I hope the algorithm is kind to you!
I have no idea what this channel is but I've been a fan of the series since the start of EU3 and saw how freaking long this video is and was intrigued
Welcome
Great video! It's clear you put in a lot of work and that you have passion for the game. Hope to see more good stuff!
Never heard of you before, but you get a subscribe for me. This is an excellent piece of criticism
Welcome!
Damn this is pretty good so far. I've been waiting for someone to tackle Paradox games in this format.
Really enjoyed watching the video, and I completely agree with your analysis of the mechanics in EU4. I absolutely love the game-it's probably my most played title-but for a game that prides itself on historical accuracy, the development mechanic is one of the most absurd features in any Paradox game. The fact that, with enough monarch points, I can turn the deserts of Libya into one of the world's biggest cities in a single day will never stop being funny to me.
I also find it interesting that the changes to the institutions system and AI development have made it so there’s rarely a tech disparity after the 1600s. When I play as Great Britain and conquer land in Asia or Africa, the game clearly wants and expects these regions to be behind in tech-but they almost never are. As you mentioned, the game has a very Eurocentric worldview, and the institutions and tech systems seem designed to ensure Europe stays ahead in tech. It’s interesting to me that the mechanics fail to create this experience. What’s even more interesting is that, despite this being an apparent 'issue,' the developers haven’t addressed it in any way.
Lastly as a fun tidbit, sometime during Eu4s post-launch development paradox intended to a fully functional pop system to replace development, but it turned out to be too much work to implement. It would have been interesting to see how a pop system would have addressed some of the issues you brought up in parts 2 and 3, but I guess we will have to wait to EU5.
But overall great video and thoughtful analysis, and I'm looking forward to watching your EU5 analysis in 10 years.
Very interesting points. Seems like there’s often a conflict between “history” and gameplay balance.
Excellent video!
Thank you!
32:30 "War makes states and states make war" -Charles Tilly
I am actually watching this now as someone who played everything from paradox except from EU4.
For some reason theme never resonated with me but this may be a good way to see if I change my opinion
Let us know what you think
wow I thought I'd just put on some sludge in the background while I study but this is astonishingly well made. I'm not really sociologically minded, but I do recognise some of these ideas from Illusions of progress by georges sorel - you should check it out sometime.
I wouldn't personally place as much of an emphasis on the supposed negative cultural impact of today's grand strategy games, though. They really are just games at the end of the day, and I appreciate them as the flawed starting-off points for learning modern era history that they are. The players will always bring their cultural and educational biases to the table, and it'd be hard to start straight up lecturing them. So far, we could've done waay worse than paradox and civ, but, of course, let's hope eu5 does acknowledge this critical approach.
Thanks for the kind words! I p much agree. It’s not like eu4 is corrupting the minds of the masses, more like it’s just one more source of media propagating certain narratives (possibly ironically? Possibly for roleplay? Who knows). I just find it interesting to examine.
Some things actually bother me but for the most part yeah it’s definitely not the worst thing. If it was, I would’ve stopped playing long ago. At the same time, I’m not sure if I would be as interested in the game if I learned about it today, in large part due to the narratives I critiqued
here before 1k, I anticipate 100k long-term
Fingers crossed
Man I never even played the game but I'll be mad if it doesn't blow tf up
I think the Mingsplosion, one of the laziest and most nonsensical constants in the game, shows how heavily the game embodies Eurocentrism at the cost of non European states, and this is largely due to player insistence. Eurocentrism beget Eurocentrism. I also think the model of state formation which prevents a multitude of significant real world historical states from existing such as the Maratha Confederacy, exists on a European model that fails even to serve Europe - you can't form Belgium in EU4 etc.
Ming is designed to die by railroading, and Belgium shouldn't exist
I think the Dhimmi is more about Jewish and Orthodox Christian scholars than Catholic Christian scholars as their influence in translating Greek and Roman era texts and the diversity of thought is what is pointed to as a significant factor of the "Islamic Golden Age"
That would definitely make more sense
1:53:33 Those are the tech groups that haven't embraced Feudalism at the start of the game and thus have a +50% tech cost. They don't have any modifiers on embracing institutions.
Correct. I kind of phrased it weirdly, but I meant that they’re penalized by being 1 institution behind
I remember a time when it was far more common for institutions to spawn outside europe. around emperor/leviathan/domination not sure where it started or stopped being a thing.
I liked that.
and my greatest hope for EU5 is dynamic trade.
I don't like how all trade flows to and ends up in europe. that shouldn't happen if my player empire is by far #1 great power, I should be able to pull trade the other direction if I want to.
for me the eurore centrism is definitely why I play more in europe than outside of.
if I can spawn institutions outside europe consistently, and pull trade from europe to asia, africa or even america. I would rarely play in europe.
That’s very interesting to hear
I really hope some of the main themes of this video reach the designers of eu5/project Ceasar which is currently under development. As a late player of the game some of the mechanics based on location were extremely frustrating and didn't make sense in the context of the run.
I honestly think it may be too late and that not enough of the core audience rly wants that change
Holy fuck underrated
Diplomats and merchants also have names, even though they are all vampires
Oh true
Yeah, one more video before bed, I think
Artillery gives defense to the unit in front? That makes sense? How did i miss that across thousands of hours?
Im learning too much about eu4 and myself. Good video!
Ikr there’s so many things you learn in this game after infinite hours. I learned so much making this video
love this table top notch stuff 1:22:25
Goated Video💯💯💯
2:21:34 small error on the chart, says manpower instead of ducats on the left
damn it, i knew i'd miss one detail lol
I'm sorry I don't have time to watch more than a hour of your video, first of all, that's a huge work and I respect that, now I have quite some things to say about some points :
- Eu4 is heavely centered around Europe, you're perfectly right, it could be better not only for a representation but also for a gameplay perspective.
- It's been a hour and the main point of this video is violence and domination is bad, wich is to say the least itself heavely eurocentric take, many cultures and people considered war, massacres and domination as the sole perspective and pupose of existence (the mongols used a massive massacre doctrine to frighten and dominate other peoples, the muslims had a record of more than a thousand years of slavery and heavy tax based on origin and religion, the Aztecs litteraly murduring vanquished soldiers of dominated vassals states)
- World it self is a 0 sum game if you consider territory, you could have provinces as little as pavement on a street and yet if you control it and it's ressources no one does, what happpen if you control all of this pavement ? You dominate/control the world (and the same applies to opponents/rivals)
Let's take a real life exemple, France did wage war and expand around europe at the expense of other powers, whilst Italian states didn't much expand (didn't prevent them to wage war tho) and the nation that obtained the most power was France (and I'm talking prior Italian unification which by essence is an expension by war)
Eu4 is'nt perfect, but it does pretty well at depicting what happened and be fun to play, werehas games such as Victoria 3 are more realistic when it comes tobthe control of a nation (very little ability to declare any type of reform without having half of your country defecting in months, don't have control over the armies, generals do...)
But I find very boring Vic3 compared to Eu4 precisly because of that, I know it's subjective but having more control is what makes me play this game instead of the most recent such as Vic3 or CK3.
And I would like to conclude that it's easy to say it's "just a game", but I also think it's pretty easy to say "voilence and domination is bad" there is a reason why many rules across history even outside Europe ruled by the motto "si vis pacem para bellum" roughly translated to "one who wants peace goes/prepare to war"
Ayo my guy! Effort deserves a reward! Hope my comment, like and sub helps! Also my RUclips premium watch time
Thanks for making this video❤ heres a comment for Mr Algo Rithm
Anyone else come here from poiuymew's shoutout?
Ok so I do think you missed talking about the game difficulties and Iron Man, which is a big annoying explicit design feature and community expectation that I think has space for discussion, but it's impressive that pre setup options like that, custom nations and settings are really the only thing you missed. Very solid comprehensive review.
I think the tension between the historical more racist approaches and the present not as racist approaches comes down to having more and more staff and even leads who are more and more opposed to the racism of the easier Eurocentric approaches, and it would be more consistent if the entire game released when Lions of the North did, etc
It’s true, but I still feel like for example the origins DLC has a super orientalist vibe, even the literal name. Overall though they clearly *tried* to move past at least some of those framings. Not sure how successfully tbh.
As for difficulty, I had a section planned to talk about stuff like difficulty, in-game score, the ledger, province history and ruler histories and music but ultimately I thought i didn’t have enough to say at high enough quality to include it.
@thatguyZako I really don't think they ended it, haven't followed EU5 development because that would take effort, but I do think they improved - I also think Orientalism is more complicated than the pop culture understanding/the book put it
I love watching 5 hour long videos on my least liked paradox game
I have only once reformed off of a non European power outside of MP and it was the Mamluks, who are kinda like a European power?
Close enough
Remember me
Holy shit
:0
uhmm actually mud hut are not less advanced than a cathedral, they are just different bro
Tell us more
This is like a 5 hour Rosencreutz video, which I'll assume you'd take as a compliment. I fully disagree with your interpretation of the game, and especially the politics that are the lens with which you view the game. EU4 would not benefit from being less Euro-centric. The game's original vision is about the rise of nation states in Europe, and their subsequent conquest of the world. Expanding the scope of the game to properly represent the philosophies of the rest of the world is unviable. Clearly, you had fun playing this game, or else you wouldn't have put a comical amount of time into it, or this video. It would be far less fun if development time was spent on making the game fit all countries rather than focusing on the gameplay styles that the core of the gameplay is about.
I mean, we might disagree that the game would benefit from being less Eurocentric, which is more or less speculation, but aside from that it sounds like we totally agree about the game as a phenomenon, it’s goals and how it achieves those goals
I won't speak on your politics, but as for me, I have zero problem with a European company making a game about Europe for Europeans. That's pretty much the most normal thing that can happen, and like you said its the most narratively central part of the game. My problem only starts when the treatment of the rest of the world at times falls into stereotypes, or notions of inferiority. My issue isn't 'what' the game is about (europe) it's more 'how' (by making almost everyone else seem at times homogenous, at times nonexistent, at times inferior).
@ I just think that it's much more efficient use of development time to embrace the game's innate euro-centrism rather than to devote time trying to make countries that don't match the gameplay loop work. The core systems just don't work for a lot of the world during this era, and I'd argue it's not worth trying to fix. I would prefer, for instance, PDS to make a generic disaster akin to the English Civil War, where the nobility revolts against a king who is acting too absolutist relative to the amount of control he has (a better Court and Country, essentially), rather than attempting to make Siberian tribes or Tibetan minors better represent how the region was in the era. This generic disaster would be relevant for almost all players in almost every campaign and better represent the conflict between monarchs and privileged nobility, whereas the changes in Siberia and Tibet would really only affect players conquering those regions as Russia, India, or China.
I think you put too much emphasis on the cultural impact of EU4's framing. Most players already subscribed to the Guns, Germs, and Steel interpretation or are familiar with its counterarguments. A game has to make sacrifices and abstractions for the sake of fun, and the euro-centric design of EU4 simplified the era enough to be a game that is simpler to develop and fun to play.
Great video!
Thanks!