The games are great to a point - their treatment of slavery is the most obvious. EU4, a game about colonization, slavery was one of the greatest factors in colonization => slaves are a non-factor in colonization + nobody consumes slaves, some places just produce them + abolishing slavery is like the least interesting decision you could make, no effect on anything. (Slavery is a little better in Vic2, to be fair.)
Also, world conquest is too easy. Geography, culture, religion have only a negligible effect. Anyone can conquer anyone and nobody really objects.
And there are no social problems, just a few negative stats you make go away with points. Society can only go up - money, technology, religion, absolutism, militarism, etc. - they only have positive effects.
Yeah, one of the biggest problems with EU4 from a gameplay standpoint IMO is that it does basically nothing to simulate the difficulties of ruling a giant empire, especially with a bunch of conquered peoples who in recent memory were independent. Once you reach a certain size in game, you have to fuck up massively for everything to collapse.
Right. And the game itself becomes tedious because you can't delegate responsibilities. Commanding a stack or two of troops is fun. Commanding 10 stacks (possibly on 3 fronts) where the greatest danger is 2 stacks ending up on a random low-development province together and losing thousands of soldiers to attrition is booooring. Same with a fleet of ships vs. several fleets that require micromanagement to avoid attrition on intercontinental voyages.
A better game would make you share responsibilities with intelligent AI - which would both save on tedious micro and lead to frequent entropy, as a region that doesn't need you and can defend itself can tell you to fuck off.
The games are great to a point - their treatment of slavery is the most obvious. EU4, a game about colonization, slavery was one of the greatest factors in colonization => slaves are a non-factor in colonization + nobody consumes slaves, some places just produce them + abolishing slavery is like the least interesting decision you could make, no effect on anything. (Slavery is a little better in Vic2, to be fair.)
Also, world conquest is too easy. Geography, culture, religion have only a negligible effect. Anyone can conquer anyone and nobody really objects.
And there are no social problems, just a few negative stats you make go away with points. Society can only go up - money, technology, religion, absolutism, militarism, etc. - they only have positive effects.
Yeah, one of the biggest problems with EU4 from a gameplay standpoint IMO is that it does basically nothing to simulate the difficulties of ruling a giant empire, especially with a bunch of conquered peoples who in recent memory were independent. Once you reach a certain size in game, you have to fuck up massively for everything to collapse.
Right. And the game itself becomes tedious because you can't delegate responsibilities. Commanding a stack or two of troops is fun. Commanding 10 stacks (possibly on 3 fronts) where the greatest danger is 2 stacks ending up on a random low-development province together and losing thousands of soldiers to attrition is booooring. Same with a fleet of ships vs. several fleets that require micromanagement to avoid attrition on intercontinental voyages.
A better game would make you share responsibilities with intelligent AI - which would both save on tedious micro and lead to frequent entropy, as a region that doesn't need you and can defend itself can tell you to fuck off.