Savoy Universalis, Lae'Zel Barlass, and Postprescient Gaming

"Our bodies were laid out evenly for fifteen yards
Well, two feet above each of our heads was a fly trapped in a jar
Well, I hadn't noticed, but the people really noticed
That they really didn't want us around

So every single one of us fed the ground"

 

Modest Mouse - Fly Trapped in a Jar

 

 

Like many others, I've praised V:tM-Bloodlines' Malkavian playthrough for its highly entertaining "insane" dialogues. You'd barely know what you're saying half the time. Of course, that worked in large part because Malk changes remained mostly cosmetic. Your quests and rewards were still the same as other clans, with even the same dialogue options, merely rewritten. Your quest log still gave straightforward instructions. You didn't gain or lose XP by arguing with a stop sign (no matter how much hardcore roleplayers might've wanted that.) And that's a good thing. Games are supposed to be first and foremost: playable! If your mission journal reads "egrets egress regrets ingrate in great Belgrade" which you're expected to interpret as "bring a tire iron to The Last Round within five minutes or your head explodes" you bought a poorly designed game.

 

On a completely unrelated topic, I had some fun repeatedly losing at Old World yesterday, usually either via bear-less barbarians or thusly:

 

On my settings (middle diff., large map, 5 civs) you either stake out three city sites during the initial land grab or you've likely lost due to the fixed number of cities on the map. You can sometimes make up the difference mid-game depending on the tribal sites near you, but for my own part I'm pretty quick to hit the "new map" button if I stumble through the fog of war only to find those damn gift-bearing greeks've bird-dogged one of my intended holes.

I'd switched over to Old World for a bit after getting frustrated with Europa Universalis 4. After my first impression of basic mechanics as a relatively simple tribe, I jumped into European politics. Avoiding the superpowers and having already played Switzerland, Milan, Venice, Genoa and Naples in EU3, I settled upon Savoy, medium-sized and not exceptionally profitable but with some potentially excellent positioning. It also starts with one little ally and two little vassals... one of which is scripted as secessionist:

I honestly don't know what happens going forth if you surrender to Geneva's demands, as losing two of my starting provinces three years into the game is a non-starter. Might as well pick a smaller faction right out the gate rather than concede a third of my territory for the same effect. I do know that refusing renders Geneva impossible to integrate anyway, as other nations immediately rush to support its independence, causing a loss in three of five attempts so far.

EU3 did have a few scripted/inevitable events, usually slow, major, sweeping changes affecting half the factions, like the Protestant Reformation or discovery of the New World. They're cropping up far more frequently in EU4, and with more immediate impact. The effect so far is that I can't plan ahead not knowing how borders will shift or what numeric penalties I'll incur due to big or small decisions like Genevan separatism, the pope at Avignon, France immediately annexing Provence every single game, Italian secession from the Holy Roman Empire or The Italian Wars, prompting a restart every time I adjust my strat only to get another piano dropped on me. These don't feel like delightful new surprises spicing up the game experience so much as "gotcha" moments where a GM reasserts supremacy over players.

I've discussed this problem several times before, and it usually boils down to what am I getting in return for the information being withheld? Because too often all you get is getting to start over so the developer can pad out those marketing-mandated campaign length or player/game hour counts. This is actually a bigger issue in RPGs (see losing Erik to the Tremere in V:tM- Redemption for a classic old example, or losing your army at the end of Act 3 in Wrath of the Righteous for a more recent one) especially as most of them now try to duplicate The Elder Scrolls' winning compromise between story and sandbox, mandating the player cheat and look up exactly when to stall the story to sandbox up some XP and gear before moving forward. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, everyone will tell you not to meet the lordling for his dawn hunting trip until after you've quested your way around. You not only need to learn to fight before you move on with your epic ascension to greatness, but the trip itself is time-consuming, in a game where time means hunger, sleep and potentially other events' expiration.

Baldur's Gate 3 though, following in D:OS2's footsteps, is the worst offender I've seen recently, making it painfully obvious at every step that you're expected to know all of the fights beforehand, whether because quests have time-dependent effects or to plan out their relative difficulty for your party's level, or just to know what items you'll need walking through various doors.

- I failed to use either Lump's horn or the golem bell simply for never knowing when there would or wouldn't be one more fight up ahead

- I'd saved brains in jars from the start thinking they might be useful at some point, but when I found the brain reader machine the brains in question were still in my stash back at camp, since nothing indicates it's coming up

- Minthara! - her character arc is so poorly plotted and counterintuitive that there's basically no way to navigate it without cheating and looking up outcomes beforehand

- I've constantly had to reload fights due to the invidual character inventories and mountains of potentially useful trash loot (like brain jars) making it impossible to keep the right potion or arrow handy

- clicking on the newspaper editor instantly throws you out of the building and puts a timer on the quest

- it's pointless to try escaping the prison quietly in the Shadowlands, because all guards go on alert after a few steps anyway, and even rushing to the boat keeps you locked there in combat until they arrive

- the underwater jailbreak:

Lae'Zel: fast, strong, and a durn good door in a pinch

You get five rounds to reach along four corridors with your party of four and get NPCs back out. OK... it can be done with some planning and potions. But, wait, never mind, screw your plan. What looks to be an ankle-deep puddle turns out to spawn shark monsters every round. A few extra gratuitous reloads tacked on, courtesy of "fuck you"

- destroying one of the hag's healing shrooms summons her and throws you into the fight. Ironically this seems a mechanic to prevent players from using foreknowledge to make the fight easier, but just ends up forcing a reload for anyone including the shrooms in general trap-sweeping.

And on and on and on. It would in fact be harder to find quests or locations in BG3 where you're not somehow penalized with a reload or five for lacking foreknowledge of scripted events. THAT is why the game takes 200 hours.

Returning to our Savoyard muttons, it was easier for EU3 to stand out back in 2007 when its noteworthy competition merely came from the increasingly stagnant and dumbed down Civilization series. Not only are there far more 4X and other strategy titles around, but Paradox itself has diversified with Stellaris and now publishing Age of Wonders. Historical accuracy is EU4's most obvious competitive edge, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised they've been playing it up.

But part of EU3's charm was making ridiculous things happen (Catholic Shahs colonizing Australia and such-like) and this is why you have multiple historical start points, picking where you want history to diverge. The less divergence you allow, the less what you're playing feels like a game and the more it feels like a railroaded RPG plot. As I noted about one obscure Ancient Egypt edutaiment game, the didactic condescension of putting a student through fixed paces gives you the worst of both worlds, dictating priorities while randomizing success.

 

My first thought on seeing Savoy's Geneva independence event was that obviously I'm supposed to be playing Switzerland. Or really, just picking any of the historical "winners" since I now know that aside from starting stats, they will also benefit from GM favoritism during later events. The fact EU now proudly displays a top score counter only reinforces this impression as NOT playing for the high score was one of its previous selling points.

Having early city sites you didn't know exist sniped in Old World is infuriating and time-wasting, but at least can be compensated via prioritizing exploration and yields counterbalancing gameplay pay-offs. First off, it lessens the impact of AI plopping down endless cities in moronic spots. Second, combined with a map generator capable of avoiding both clumping and homogenization, it tends to focus expansion.

Around turn 100 of 200, the Greeks (blue) and I (green) finally polished off the last tribal settlements between our territories, only to discover the entire northwest quarter of the map was tribal land consisting of eight more city sites, more than any empire in existence. This new world rapidly hosted a mid-game land rush with the Persians (red) joining in to nab the nearest one across the gulf.

But what am I getting for the scripted surprises in EU4 or BG3, aside from a chance to restart the campaign, mash the Quick Load button or spend hours reading the wiki to cheat my way through predestined winner/loser options? Even in V:tM-Bloodlines, the Nosferatu sewer mssion gets remembered as one of the game's low points largely because you're not warned how goddamn LONG it is before going in... but at least your quest log didn't send you to Kuala Lumpur when the objective's under Hollywood. At least you're not told seven provinces when they turn into five.

 

Generally speaking, in a game you should be expected to know the rules, not the future.