Garden of Eden, Chapter I

(This is the first chapter of an Europa Universalis 4 fanfiction of one of my saves. Please enjoy.)
January, late XIVth century, a village in Macedonia...
Snow storms were roaring with all their might. It was a cold day, cold enough to freeze the lakes. Mayhaps God had truly forsaken the Christendom? Crops did not yield well, most children under the age five died, finding people frozen to death in roads was not a rare occasion.
In one of the houses of a such village, a baby cry was heard.
"A healthy boy" shouted the poor farmer's daughter. She was all too excited to get a new brother!
Father was overjoyed too, but he was deeply worried, as he was looking into the Mother's weary eyes, this child too would not survive the harsh times, they thought quietly.
But... wait.. what was that? He was shocked and rushed to the outside to see it from close! The apple tree near the house was green as spring and it had even bore fruits! Clearly, this was a sign from Christ! This child was blessed!
The boy quickly rose up to be a model man of God, excellent in theology, administration,  arts and virtue. He was eventually went to Constantinople, but he routinely denied higher positions of authority. Instead, he weaved the much-needed link between common man and clergy and the became a moral beacon in these hard times of Christendom.
But, a clergyman  was not what he meant to be either... He was doing, weird things... Lighting candles by thinking, finding things he wants near him, not feeling cold, being able to understand animals on a deeper level? What was going on? Was he really a saint as some proclaimed? He certainly didn't know of any sorcery. Abnormalities did not cease there however.. He was seeing... a dark future. A world on fire. The servants of Satan killing the heart of the world... Lords, dukes, kings, popes, patriarchs, all of them... They were all leeches on the true believer. And, somehow... he was meant to be a leading figure, guiding people to heaven? How? It made little sense... But he very well knew of the history of the faith, such beliefs would easily brand him as heretic, all nobles and clergy who praise him as a saint would come after his head in an instant... He kept anything that would raise suspicion under the rug. No, the time for acting was not now, the time was for... discovery.
He gave up clergy robes, tagged along merchants and went to the east, west, north and south. He learned so much about people's and place's of the world. People were so different, but they were also quite similar. The heathen beliefs was not so foul after all. Everyone wanted to connect to the divine, everyone prayed, even the least believer of them. And his queer talents and dreams... went only stronger and stronger.
The priest did ever not return to Greece. It was said he reached the lands of Prester John, and reached to heavens there. But someone the most queer reached to the shores of Macedonia instead. A young woman, beautiful as the dawn , with a hair white as snow... Her words were truly magical, even pierced through the hearts of the most misogynist of men. She claimed to be a servant of God, promised servants of darkness would be defeated and by will of Christ, a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth will prevail. She rallied the people of Macedonia, and in the middle of the war between Crusaders and Ottomans, the Muslim rulers was driven out of Macedonia, with some of their folk converting to the Lord's cause.
Who were meant to be their lords now though? Governors from Constantinople? Genoese merchants? Venetians? A Serbian duke? Mayhaps they were to be a vassal of Hungarian kings?  Or maybe they would seek protection from Frankish lords?
No! The Roman Empire was of a bygone era. Italian doges only cared about their pocket. Any ordinary lords were too quick to turns deviants in the pursuit of petty rivalries. East and West, their churches were crumbling apart, they were too slaves of vain ambitions. No crusader could save them, as Varna had proved once again, their age was coming to an end. No, no old order, no decadent duke, no backwards bishop could help. The past could not be returned, no kings of past was necessary, when they submitted to the Lord himself! With the guidance of the Saint-Lady, and the prayers from their hearts, no servant of Satan could prevail! But they were destined for even more, for being the Shepherds of the world, bringing the Garden of Eden on Earth!

The Saint-Lady was also destined for more. Although she styled a noble house name for herself, she was not meant to be just another tyrant or a great conqueror. Nor she was to be a Joan d'Arc figure for the East. She was to become something more queer, and more divine. Yet for now, she was Robin from house Aidios, first of Her name, ruler of Macedonia.
The Ottomans were furious. They were exhausted due to last war and something about this lady made them a little hesitant but they would not tolerate such insolence for long... And Italian lords were already taking an interest in the prosperous lands. The garden was small... yet it was surrounded by wolves...
And such 2as the year of the Lord 1444, the first year of the reign of Robin, the Saint-Lady of House Aidios...
(To be continued...)

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Commentary and Footnotes:
I played the game on patch 1.27. Every DLC up to and including Rights of Man besides Mare Nostrum, American Dream and various Unit Packs. I also used Nation Designer Extender Unlimited and More Colors for Custom Nations mods.
While searching how to make more interesting Custom Nations, I have found Nation Designer Unlimited. The mod basically allows you to make really wild nations. So I have set out to make the most overpowered thing one can have imagine. The mod also allows you to play as religions from converted Crusader King 2 saves, so I have made some research on old heresies and come up with a fantasy lore for my overpowered nation idea. I have decided to turn it into a story, planning it that way made the game so much fun and it gave me an excuse to write fiction. I have used some elements from Fire Emblem and Trails in the Sky as well. If you didn't catch them, don't worry,  references will become clearer in the next chapters... and I intend to do commentary and additional into what I have actually done in the game
Hope you enjoyed it! I have already completed the playthrough so the story will surely, if slowly continue, so please tune in for the next chapter!
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

Burdening Player with Morality: Europa Universalis 4

Many stories contain morals, morality tales are probably old as humanity as itself. Yet, it is dubious that humans, even children, actually learn morals by reading or hearing about them. Most of the time morals are followed because they feel common sense or natural, rather than reaching them through rigorous analysis. I speak this from personal experience by being rather unkind to bugs throughout childhood and now actively avoiding to kill them for the simple reason that I feel their lives need to be respected too. Of course, nor social indoctrination nor the effects of the media we consume cannot be denied, in fact morals often feel natural because of it, but it is probably not controversial to say this happens by observing the patterns of behavior rather than hearing from toddler cartoons or the episode about bullying of a popular family drama .
Why then, so many stories are written, read, praised or criticised for containing messages about what is wrong and right? Do people simply enjoy someone else telling their opinions back at them? Yes. Do people love to see their values getting triumphant in fiction? Also yes. Do people actually hope their work can at least introduce them to their worldview? True again. You can't even really avoid moral messages; all stories, be it an 5000 year old epic or the excuse plot of a platformer video game,  contain a message anyway, actively avoiding having one is a message itself.
However, most stories are not simply about reflection or propaganda, an invaluable function they have is to explore morals in a situation where they would be actually relevant. For example, to kill someone is an action which ideally no one should have to face, but fiction enables us to experience the process and the consequences of upholding attitudes about killing, without any harm to real people. Most people have certain situations where they think the aggression is just, but carrying moral values in abstract and carrying them out are entirely different experiences.
In older stories readers were directly told what conclusions that they need to arrive at, which today continues as turning a character a mouthpiece for the author. Then there came stories that are ideally crafted to prove the author's point. None of them could truly satisfy the need for exploration, because they felt inauthentic. Eventually, it was the time to put an effort to make characters and the worlds they reside feel plausible, so that the morality at play can be witnessed openly. For some writers, this was still not subtle enough so they wrote as if they upheld the opposite of their actual moral values. Nowadays, the word is frequently being thrown around to avoid any responsibility but works of satire had usually the loudest messages.
At last, there came video games, adding one more layer of subtlety, by making players carry the burden of morality. Some video games use some sort of reward/punishment mechanic to direct the player into some actions but others don't even comment on the player decision. A famous example is Shin Megami Tensei series, while the mainline games take a certain kind of ending as canon, the series usually avoid judging the player while they shape the world according to  philosophies they hold correct. However moral neutrality or player responsibility is not same as avoiding responsibility. For instance, a game regularly using rape for establishing female characters, designating people of color as common targets to shoot or having LGBT characters only as punchlines certainly is not presenting morally neutral, at best those games usually just pretend they don't have a stance. No, moral neutral presentation is about making player face the consequences, not avoid them; it just does it without openly spelling it out. However, it is undeniable that there is often a thin line between passively endorsing morally bad actions and being neutral and letting the audience come to conclusions. So, how can this be achieved well? Europa Universalis 4, or most grand strategy games in general can be a good study-case here.

Seems like a fun time for your subjects...

In EU4, the player is an invisible spirit of sorts, leading a country; the main goal is conquering other places, which amounts to re-painting your map and getting more resources... so they can used to conquer more places. It's entirely usual that the player will be responsible for deaths of millions of people, will build a tyranny that crushes any free will, ravage the world with colonialism, eradicate whole cultures.  So, what moral stance the game takes here?

• The game is completely supportive of the player in all of this. The flavor text makes it clear that no matter what you choose or what you do your behaviour is correct, your wars are just, anyone who opposes you is despicable. The game seemingly doesn't have a concrete stance regarding to ideals, the only thing it cares is the abstract idea of a nation and its values, which is open to be shaped up by player's wishes. For example, the player can make their nation the most zealous Muslims ever then make it turn it into Christian. The game is equally celebratory, after all they did nothing but protect the One True Faith!
• On the game mechanics wise, generally being totalitarian as possible is beneficial., All the numbers, modifiers and statistics compels the player to see their population as nothing but resources to get money and soldiers. If the player want to see their nation strong, doing things that actually makes their society happier and fairer is often detrimental.
• The player has to only worry about having money in treasury, having a capable army, being up to date in technology, keeping the population loyal and having a decent diplomatic stance in the world. Other than that the player has little idea what is going on in the country. They can be informed a little in the way of events, but gameplay wise they are only relevant in benefits to player, they are mostly isolated from all conflict and misery of the ordinary person, they suffer no consequences as long as the decisions end up keeping the nation strong. People being forcibly converted? A progress bar. A battle where thousands of people die? Numbers appearing indicating losses. Ongoing siege, people dying, the lands getting ravaged. Once again, numbers, the town will yield fewer resources! People being sick, hungry and getting fed up with your wars? Annoying mobs, a nuisance to the progression, must be stamped out by your arms as soon as possible or else the state will lose its grip on the provinces!

Looking like this, Europa Universalis 4 is a good candidate for the most problematic game ever created, to a degree games like Grand Theft Auto cannot even match. So how can a game like this can considered being even close to morally neutral? The magic is in implications and a little history knowledge. The very flavor text that pats the player in the back itself reveals the problems? The peasants that are unhappy with the rule is "target practice", anyone who doesn't agree with the decisions of the state is evil, all it takes to justifies a war is forging some documents,in times of war you can use a little military force to squeeze more money from population, the game keeps the track of how many soldiers died throughout your wars, the religions just turn into benefits and a tool to conquer more. Nothing stays sacred or innocent, all turns into numbers in the service of the state. Even the state itself cannot escape from this, it too becomes just a collection of numbers, nothing remains besides the abstract idea of the empire, "the invisible hand of the player." All video games are just collections of numbers, just like a book being collection of papers and ink, but EU4 deliberately strips away all humanity from them.
This is why the game's moral stance is so cold and crushing. It is exactly what "empire-building" is to an ordinary person, it is excellent at portraying how detached rulers can be. One shouldn't learn history from video games but even best history books cannot actually depict how meaningless all is and reveal the true nature of oppressive systems that present themselves us as just, glorious and righteous. Here, it shows that nude, clear representation sometimes can be more damning than outright condemnation.

The Quantity Idea group, a.k.a the Hell Idea Group

Is this all fine and good though? These games have a sizable reactionary audience after all, so are the games responsible for enabling reactionary ideas? The danger always exists for all satire works, but here it is more likely that reactionaries are drawn to this game because they already agree with the totalitarianism in the game than the game convincing people who these ideas are amazing. People say satire needs a clarity of purpose but it is kind of unavoidable people will interpret things differently. A reasonable interpretation is more important than method used by author or individual audience reaction when it comes to determining whether something can count as satire. That's why regardless how much authors intended to be or how much some players don't grasp it,  Europe Universalis 4 has a radical stance against state-building and imperialism, one that achieves by making the player carry all the decisions.
If the game is in fact a critique, is there a conflict with the game's aim to make player have fun? There isn't, the critique is not on the player but the detachment in the system itself. People play EU4 because they like low-energy games with a lot of numbers or they like historical roleplaying, some people even see a competitive aspect to it and this is perfectly fine. The difference is like playing chess and seeing real life people as chess pieces in your political ideas.
The fact that the critique can be done so brilliantly is making me desire more though. What if there were more "strategy peace games", where making the world a better place was the main goal, a game where cooperation over competition were actively encouraged? Criticism is definitely important but it is somewhat vain if we ever don't push for alternatives.
his article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.

Top 10 Worst Europa Universalis 4 Idea Bonuses

Most modifiers/bonuses you can get from ideas, policies, events etc. in Europa Universalis 4 gets actually useful when they are stocked up enough, even when they are ony really usable in special cases. But it's hard to deny there are just too many of them, which is really what makes the game unnecessarily complex. Especially what new expansions are essentially doing is adding even more bonuses, the game is just becoming way too bloated for the new players.

(All screenshots are from EU4 Wiki)

So, we will examine the ten types of bad ideas and see what's really wrong with them.

10. Narrowed Bonuses of Better Ideas

The national idea/decision bonuses are usually justified by historical accuracy, this is why certain nations have stronger bonuses, representing historical "success" they had. But I don't like this justification, because idea groups already represents the direction a country goes. I am not entirely against national ideas as they add some historical flavor, but I am seriously aganist just picking up some nations for being "chosen ones" as if they just developed independent of the material conditions.
Giving smaller bonuses is one thing, but it is even more slap on the  when you have the more specialized versions of same ideas. Like when you only have admin. tech. cost bonus instead of just tech. cost bonus or infantry cost bonus instead of regiment cost bonus. This especially gets worse with naval and maritime ideas, sorry for saying this Paradox but naval battles aren't just that deep, the side with more ships just wins 95% of the time, so I seriously don't get why devs try to make something look more complicated than it is.

9. +X Leaders Without Upkeep/+%X Available Mercenaries

These two bonuses share the fate of becoming less useful with the new patches. The former was never that useful anyway as military points just come in spades, but the latter took a serious hit when base mercenary rate was considerably increased and the mercenary spam became somewhat less useful as time goes on. This reflects another problem in the design philosophy, the devs like adding bonuses a lot but very reluctant on quitting old useless ones.

8. +X Legitimacy/+X Horde Unity/+X Devotion

Legitimacy is mainly affected from events and the situation of your heirs, which largely depends on luck. Horde Unity is pretty much depends on how aggressive the player is. Devotion already can grow slowly with a stable country and choosing right heirs and not as drastic as the other two modifiers. And with the new "strengthen government" feature, a small steady increase is pretty useless.
But it gets worse, because they become completely dead bonuses when government type changes, unless the idea alreadys adds the bonuses of other government types. One particularly bad case is the national ideas of some Mesoamerican countries, having legitimacy bonus despite being tribal democracies. I guess Paradox likes cruel jokes.
If they gave a modifier that seta minimum level of legitimacy instead of steady passive increases and if bonuses change accordingly with their respective government, it would be much useful. As it s now, they don't fit to the design of the modifiers. Ironically, the republican tradition works very well with passive bonuses, in fact it works so well the game is very reluctant to handing you out that bonuses.

7. +X% Income From Vassals/+%X Vassal Force Limit Contribution

Another example of game design contradicting with the bonuses given, you can't just increase random parameters and expect things to get better. Vassals are usually meant as an alternative way to acquire new land and the game discourages the players from having too many vassals or making them large enough to make these bonuses actually matter. Besides, the game has now tributaries if you specifically want to milk resources out of a country. Outside of very specific setups this bonuses are near useless and setting up the bonuses such a way does not justify the resources you have to spend to get them.

6. +X% Global Tariffs

The colonies give way better bonuses than tariffs, no competition. And keeping your tarrifs low is how you keep your colonies happy. I colonized in most of my campaigns and the game didn't affect in the slightest when I ignored tariffs entirely.
From this entry forward, we will encounter bonuses that would either be trivial or too powerful if they were increased to absurd amounts. Even with something like +100% or +200% increase, tariffs probably would barely make up for your colonization costs.

5. -X% Reduce Inflation Cost/ -X% Cost of Reducing War Exhaustion

These two bonuses just doesn't justify the resources spent to get them. Reducing inflation cost 75 admin points and you have to spend 400 admin points to get the idea that decreases the cost by %10 so to justify your spending you have to decrease your inflation more than 50 times, which doesn't happen even in full-length campaigns. A similar math can be done for war exhaustion, expect it is more trial because you spend dip. points and the game discourages the player from doing so with absolutism mechanic.
Well, you can ask, wouldn't they be sort of useful if they were higher? No, because much better passive bonuses already exist. Getting even a small amount of monthly reduction bonus just pretty much solves all your troubles. Manually reducing inflation/war exhaustions are designed to be costly panic buttons, so making them cost absurdly cheap would break the design.

4. +X% Prestige From Naval Battles

As I said before, naval battles are very basic in EU4. Everyone brings their ships, one or two encounters happens and the winner side basically controls the sea during the war. So a slight prestige bonus from naval warfare is not useful at all. Prestige bonus from land battles on the other hand is useful for an aggressive nation, even when bonuses are small it adds up as you encounter many, many land battles. Bonuses of similar situations doesn't just translate well to each other, yet Paradox just keeps adding bonuses anyway.
The most offensive thing about that bonus is that it makes naval idea group unnecessarily even weaker. Why not just give a flat increase to prestige instead, it makes sense within the historical context too.

3. -X% Morale Hit When Losing A Ship

Now, most bad bonuses are just extremely trivial,  too specific or have objectively better versions. . This bonus encapsulates all these, you know the drill, the naval warfare isn't just that detailed.
The reason why this bonus is especially terrible because it is deceptive and shows everything wrong with devs' obsession with overly narrow bonuses It makes the game far more complex than it actually is. Just look at how important it sounds, but sorry, these bonuses just doesn't make the game deeper.

2. -X% Migration Cooldown

Migration mechanic is only available on extremely specific conditions, conditions that are very undesirable for the player and even when conditions exists, having this bonus gives a very minor bonus, it's pretty much a dead weight idea. The problem here is more about the modifier affected rather than the bonus. When you put player into a situation that player needs to get rid of, making that situation somewhat more fun doesn't alleviate the problem. EU4 needs to drop the idea of putting players into very tedious circumstances only to just reaching to the conditions of a regular campaign. And thankfully, the way the game is going forward shows us that, the game actually did change most of its most tedious parts but unfortunately Native mechanics still remain as failed experiments for the most part.

1. +X% Chance of New Heir

I admit, the placement on the entries is somewhat arbitrary, you can swap some entries with each other and the list wouldn't be worse in the slightest, but this one definitely deserves the top spot. It's completely useless even when you are a monarchy. In one of my campaigns, I remained without a king for near 20 years, despite having +200% Chance of New Heir.
It's also uniquely bad because we don't know what the effect it has, we don't know what the chance of heir is anyways, it is a bonus that increases an invisible modifier.
The sad part is, a much better version exists. The game introduced more government types with guaranteed succession something this bonus tries to represent. This bonus has really no reason to exist yet it's literally everywhere, the game is just plagued with this one. It's truly baffling to see the adoration the devs have towards this bonus.

Dishonorable Mentions:

•  May Recruit Female General/ Increased Female Advisor Chance/ Some Other Very Specific Custom Ideas: These bonuses don't give any mechanical advantage to the player at all, but they just exist as Custom ideas, so player knows what they are getting into if they choose to select it.
• +X% Hostile Core-Creation Cost: This bonus is often just annoying and not very useful to player. But it exists to represent the countries which were not easy to conquer and it works decent enough in that regard. And it was actually useful to me for fending off big scary countries a couple of times, so I guess I have a soft spot towards it.

In conclusion,more numbers doesn't make your game mechanics deeper and subtracting stuff from your game is often as important as adding. Especially if your game is all about modifiers, you shouldn't act carefree about them. Fake complexity can drive a lot of people who would otherwise enjoy your game.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.