I am a big railroad fan. We play history game for a reason.

The earlier start date allows a much more radical departure from historical events. Before 1444, Portugal already had decades of head start in exploration. Before 1337, Portugal hadn't even conquered Cueta, though apparently (Wiki) it had some other minor steps in that direction in partnering with the Genoese in officially discovering the Canary Islands. The Black Death is the great equalizer. Once that hits, it could be any kind of game. Dynamic flavor can be very strong in EU5. ... but will it be? Probably not.

I think the level of 'railroading' in EU4 feels pretty much right... in the early game. I think the a-historical stuff can be fun and dynamic, and the first 150 or so years of the game are some of my favorites. But, despite having thousands of hours in this game over the past 8 or so years, I rarely like to play past 1700 or so. Things just get really samey at that point. I like EU4 for presenting a, relatively speaking, extremely detailed world to play around in, but *my gripe* is that as time goes on all nations converge on the same 2k-8k dev, blob states, each occupying their corners of the map, doing very little. I think the simplified nation management mechanics, along with the sum of all the various 'divergences from history' in the first century or two of the game result in a late game that's profoundly boring and flavorless. (Again, EU4: My favorite GSG, probably my favorite video game of all time.) I think that if EU5 has about the same level of agency/railroading, but expands on the diminishing returns of distant conquest (especially for large land-based empires) / internal instability potential in oversized states, the late game should hopefully be more dynamic. That way, no matter how historical / a-historical the world becomes, you could still have meaningful power struggles, regional conflicts, and more in general to *do.* To put things in perspective, I only got the "Just a bit of patience" achievement a few days ago... and I love this game. To get that achievement, I basically built myself into a totally undesirable target, and then just sat on speed 5 from 1760-1821. Sure I could conquer more, but it would just be me taking bites of our my neighbors, repeating the same sieges over and over again. There are no new alliances to be won, no new nations to take under my wing as diplomatic vassals, and no "race" for any particular region of the world - even the areas of the map that historically saw colonial conquest are instead occupied by their own, oversized, totally stable generic empires. I think EU5 is *hopefully* going in a direction to fix that problem. With a revamped economic and population sim, as well as the 'control' mechanic being added, I'm hoping that I have to actually struggle a bit to wrest control of a new frontier, or that I can destabilize a rival and cause them to break them down into constituent nations (kinda like in CK3 or Vic2). *Or* maybe add some kind of warfare mode that limits fights to small border conflicts, so that late game conflicts aren't "siege all of the Ottoman Empire down, round 27" That was very long winded. Sorry to anyone who actually read that. 😅

I love railroaded mission trees. I always get into the mindset of the country im playing anyway so its nice to have a checklist of historical things to progress through. If im playing as a manchurian tribe, i want to unite the tribes then conquer china to form Qing. I would much prefer paradox making that playthrough flavourful with historical tidbits and content rich(even if im doing it 200 years ahead of time) rather than making it "non railroaded" where that same playthrough has a bunch of universal conquering china events and milestones that are designed to be used as any country.

one thing to add. what i saw in the paradox threads is a somewhat big difference in what people count as railroading. it goes from only forced things are railroading to everything that is in the way of Sandbox is. most people are in the Middle and some that argue with each other even want the same thing but can not agree on what side that would make it.

I feel like on problem of ridding ourselves of railroading competely is that we are too bad at simulating the complex nature that formed history. For example, the conquest of the Mamluks or partitions of Poland were very peculiar events enabled by the contemporary circumstances. Or the rise of Prussia and Sweden as military powehouses or the British Empire. However, since we are pretty bad at properly simulating the historical circumstances with the intricacies of diplomacy and culture, trade and economy to a very in depth extent, we are often left with clearly unrealistic blobs on a map that simply break immersion. The competency of a ruler and the wellbeing of their populace may enable reforms that launch a commercial or military empire in a specific region. What you get with our current ability to simulate is flavourless blobs that all feel the exact same.

I think that the current way EU4 is in terms of railroading is good. I think it would be nicer if the Mission trees had more alternative paths or if there was a system like Imperator but I like the balance. I play Paradox for the historical plausibility and think that the current system is quite better compared to the old system. Ultimately, I hope that the mix continues for EU5

I think one thing that needs to be clarified is the difference between "forcing the same exact random events to happen" (e.g., Burgundian inheritance, Henry founding Anglicanism, etc) and "things that happened for bigger picture causal reasons IRL will still happen, because the simulation is good enough to model those same causal factors" (e.g., ERE falling to Muslim superpower, causing Iberians to be motivated to sail West and find alternative trade routes to break the Muslim monopoly on the silk road, etc). The most "railroading" the latter might require is just weighting the AI to care about the same things those countries did, which led them to make the choices they did. And then that, together with the dynamic implementation of random events (like what you described with a generic Henry VIII event chain leading to founding a new denomination) could be just the right amount of historical content, without stuff that actively ignores the shape that the historical trajectory in the particular playthrough is taking.

I think mission trees there is a good thing. They are not menditory while if you follow them than you get some good buffs so I think it is a good system

Some things should absolutely be railroaded. Look at the more free approach in Victoria 3 and how that impacts things. On the one hand the idea of a dynamic American Civil War is interesting, but in practise it either doesn't fire or is such a rapid departure from any plausible historical scenario it breaks immersion.

Not regarding historical railroading per se, but regarding mission trees; after playing eu4 for hundreds of hours mission trees are a nice way to give some goals to work towards, because at that point you have probably achieved most of the generic map painting goals you might set for yourself many times over.

I just got the news. IT'S CALLED SICILY IN EU5

It also comes down to the means of railroading. In EUIV, claims are fairly expensive, have to be built up over time, have cumulative cost. It's an important obstacle to expansion. Then, mission trees will hand out areas or subcontinents worth of claims like candy, just so you can paint in historical borders. Want to carve your own path as a cool tag? Good luck. Want to play Austria without having the world handed to you on a platter? Good luck. Gaining a PU is the result of careful planning and luck-or the nepotistic boon of a mission tree. I want a game with a rigorous, robust historical simulation (not necessarily hyperrealistic-just well integrated). Every mission tree that unveils the invisible hand ruins that a little. Like, the game couldn't achieve historical Ottoman expansion by its own expansion, so they had to grant it to them by fiat. It's better to have well developed game mechanics that allow for history to play out, or plausible, non-historical alternatives. Then you can have an option that nudges the CPU world to follow history, for those who want it, while keeping player interactions dynamic and genuine.

I think the largest issue with this discussion (and by extension the grand strategy genre as whole) is the focus on railways vs no railways. Instead of addressing the reason why the railways exist in the first place. Simply put, the AI lacks the ability to adequately challenge the player through the whole game as a result of their own passivity. Players aggressively expand and pursue objectives, the AI doesn't not only not do that, but can't do that anywhere near as efficiently. I think the simulation aspects are good enough that we could have a railway-esque experience without the mission trees, but in order to properly capitalize on that the AI needs to be enhanced (through buffs of their own, limitations applied to the player, or some other means) so that they can develop their own interests and continue to oppose the player.

Playing sandbox paradox games for a while. And railroad sometimes offers a fresh take

In my honest opinion, I feel like centralization would be central in the existence of kingdoms and the struggle for more royal power, aswell as pleasing the estates, should be heavily portrayed. At the same time, royal decisions such as marriages, political entities wanting to claim thrones (with support of factions), and treaties with claims or exchanges (like the treaty of tordesilhas as you mentioned), should be possible. Also, the player should have real motivations to control or conquer territory, as to not have territories which are a burden to mantain, wether it be because of worsening relations with other nations, the rebelious population, or just because it doesnt give any returns.

7:35 That sound like a more extreme version of gallicanism.

i do believe that there should be more alternative history mission paths for the mission trees than there are. Like Romania trying to forge a dacian Kingdom/Empire (like Catherine of Russia had the idea to do),creat a Gepid kingdom and culture(considering that historically the ruling classes have or were from a different people than they were ruling around Europe and that will be a bit simmilar with the re-latinisation movement in the later centuries and they could add a "invite a Prussian/Brandenburg/Hohenzollern prince" as a nod to the Romanian Royal family post-Little Unification), a Cuman/Pecheneg (because of the Bassarab dynasty) orthodox kingdom. You know wacky things like that. P.S.: I want the Paradox "railroading" in part because it is more "pathing" than actual "railroading", if the game crashed every time you did not do what it wanted or did anything else (like making a country colonize the americas that didn't do tha) that i would consider railroading and i would hate it.

I thought EU4 had an appropriate level of railroading. EU3 felt like it had too little.

I think dynamic railroading would be optimal where by you could still have historical outcomes (with a option to decrease/increase the chance for historical game play) and that if you play a nation and change something that the railroading adapts to the new situation

The thing about it is that, due to how far back the start date is, it kinda means that realistically, even with relatively minor changes, a lot of IRL trends just wouldn't happen in most scenarios. And, it turns out, that isn't always interesting. (most) people aren't gonna be too excited about Europe... Just not colonizing. Or the protestant reformation and spread of the enlightenment not happening. And the devs can't exactly explore alternate timelines, so they can't add that much interesting new mechanics that don't have any solid IRL basis.

It might have changed, but back when missions were being introduced DDRJake(?) said the AI has a lit of "primary" priorities, that it peruses before doing other things (such as the ottomans invading the more powerful Egypt, rather then eating the small weak Italian states), and if they have a mission, that mission is made a secondary priority. Lot of missions correspond with those primary priorities (such as that invasion of Egypt), but the AI focuses on those priorities first, before doing other missions. When they redid the AI logic so they blob more, two of those universal priorities given to all the AI are unify your area, and unify your culture group, and once you're a kingdom rank, unify your culture group. Which is why the Ottomans spend so much time faffing about in the Arab world, rather then conquering the small Italian states, even after they'd done their unique historical priorities. So they do pursue them, but realistically they'll never finish them, because they have to beat the giga Austria that controls Hungary before they move on to the next set of things to do, but are to weak to beat giga Austria, so will just sit there.

it should be toggleable

Honestly, it should be inspired by imperator Rome’s system

If CK3 has taught us anything, having a game that's TOO open is incredibly boring and lacks character. You can play Ireland, Anatolia, Burma or Benin and everything will feel... the same.

Railroading is a complicated thing, I personally don't like it but I understand why many people want it, I personally don't like it because in such larger-scale strategy games I personally enjoy the chaos and unpredictability, the fact that "anyone" can rise to greatness and historical ones can collapse. I don't want to see the same events repeated over and over hundreds of times* of course everything could probably be solved by the fact that if they decide to ensure that certain states go down certain paths, maybe there could be a setting that would turn off the "historical AI". or something ... etc. + if I destroy a state* it should also remain destroyed at the moment certain states tend to rise from the ashes no matter how you knock them down. -conquer all the land from them. puppet? and so on. I want a game where every game is unique and different up to a certain point. Great video !

Not at all, mission trees has been the death of depth of gameplay

I like railroads in real life. In EU5, I want an ATV, please.

People against railroading have clearly never roleplayed their nations and just blob out everywhere creating ugly borders It's disgusting.

If i could choose no matter how unrealistic, i would want eu5 to be as railroaded as hoi4 on historical. However, ik that isn't possible, so i would atleast want it to be a bit more railroaded than eu4 and hopefully not less.

the reason I never got into eu4 was the railroading, it was absolutely immersion breaking I really hope eu5 moves away from it

I want less railroading like how EU3 used to be.

End the dictatorship of the railroad

This whole discussion is centered around a nonsensical false dichotomy of "railroad" vs "sandbox". EU5 should be a historical grand strategy game, simple as. Real events should be represented in the game, be it through "events" or the "situations" recently discussed in the dev diary. Nothing about these railroad the player in any way. As long as you have the same options you did in EU4, there's literally no way the game can force you down a certain path. If you hate that the French mission tree pushes you toward doing things the French actually did, then just don't do the missions. Nothing is stopping you. Sure, it may not be optimal, but why shouldn't players be rewarded for pursuing and achieving historical milestones? Should that just be removed because you don't have the willpower to ignore it? It's such a non-issue.