Hello again, I’m Arleat and today I will be discussing my current opinions in regards to EU5, the relation so far between the upcoming Project Caesar and the current structure of Paradox Interactive’s game development strategy. Let me be clear though, I am incredibly excited about Project Caesar or the unofficial EU5, their dev diaries have been fantastic and the new mechanics and ideas have blown my mind, but I’m here to discuss some fears I have in regards to the initial release of Project Caesar, however I’m sure that all of you have heard some of these fears before but please continue reading as hopefully my explanation will give you some concern.
Let’s discuss what I think the most prevalent and commonly discussed complaint is the idea of burden of expectation, that what EU5 is presenting in dev diaries are too good to be true. The majority of what I heard is mostly very conceptual, in which the mechanics explained in the dev diary are filled with flaws or exploits that ruin the overall experience of the game. I’m not super concerned with this ironically, I believe that especially considering the Paradox Interactive Team, they seem to be very on top of things especially when it comes to bug fixes or features that weren’t super utilized as well when it was released, after all Leviathan which was one of the worst DLCs released for EU4 of all time, its core mechanics: Monuments and Curry Favours are mechanics quite frequently used and improved upon. My biggest concern with the burden of expectation right now, is the actual performance speed, and arguably the scope. The dev diaries have implemented a population system and has already neared the scope and size of Voltaire’s nightmare in terms of detail. Already Voltaire’s nightmare is an actual nightmare in terms of computer’s performance. Since it is using the same engine, I would be quite surprised that the optimization of EU5 runs at the same speed of EU4.
Alright the second point that runs pretty similar to this, expansion content. A reason for EU4’s longevity and its continuous popularity and replayability is that it is continuously updated and expanded upon. This one I would argue is much less prevalent or is it more specific as my previous concern. At the end of the day, I would argue that EU4 and arguably HOI4, and Vic3 were all incomplete games with subsequent DLCs and content packs allowing the games to feel more complete. EU5 seems to be already complete, arguably the fact that Paradox believes before release that EU5 should have a similar level of complexity of EU4 currently which already is arguably one of the most complex grand strategy games of all time. The issue with a lack of future content or at least ideas of what to further expand upon especially considering it does feel like Paradox is showing all of their cards, it feels like something akin to Total War Troy and Total War Pharaoh, who arguably development wise boxed themselves in with really no idea on how to further expand upon the game other than creating new factions and new units. I fear EU5 will suffer a similar fate, but arguably it is even harder considering it already encompasses the entire world.
However, on the opposite side of things, I think the scope of this ambitious project and the fact it feels more complete will ironically turn this game into Paradox’s greatest success because of one thing that is consistent with Paradox games: their modding community. Community mods have built EU4 up whether it is incredibly popular such as Anbennar, or Ante Bellum or seeing their developers push the boundaries of EU4 such as Big Boss from the mod Flavour Universalis. I have a strong feeling that once EU5 is published, if something goes wrong from either of the two problems, the community modding teams will be the ones trailblazing if the developers can’t.
Project Caesar ironically fits its name perfectly. Caesar was almost about to become Emperor or King of Rome. EU5 is almost about to become the penultimate grand strategy game in the world. It has achieved quite a bit just like Caesar but there are knives and pitfalls that surround it. I believe it is up to us, the community of EU4/5 to be their augustus, even if it falls under its own weight, we can pick up the pieces and fix any flaws that this game will deliver to us. Till next time, Arleat.