Your ideal Europa Universalid grand strategy
As the title says: if you could handpick your mechanics of your very custom PDX grand strategy, how would it look like? Mine would go along the lines of:
- Province system:
-- less provinces, more interaction with them -> I know that 'settlements/locations' kinda do this already, but they are a bit overwhelming for me. I would involve less provinces (somewhere around the lines of EU3, or between eu3 and 4), but you could do more things in them (multiple resources, cultures, pop strata).
--organic growth and pop interaction -> populations grow as their needs are met. Culture happiness or conversion are not mana- invested actions, but organically happen based on your policies/decisions. Produced resource numbers depend on development of buildings/institutions relevant to given resource.
- Military
-- basic unit types: ranged, shock & flank (cavalry), defense & line holding (infantry) and artillery/siege. They would all have their role in battle, and their position would matter in the sense that it would affect battle stances. Battle simulation would be a mix of Crusader kings (flanks) and Eu4 (positions), with the position aspect being broadened to actual mini- battle topography (without a full battle simulation of course).
-- more military actions in the province, for ex:
Plunder: brings in money and supply/slow reinforcements, but breaks formation in case of battle
Siege: focus on sieging down the province's defenses
Entrench: takes a very optimal defensive formation, but reduced supply (with the logic that the army, holding position, has less people securing supply routes)
Characters: something similar to what Imperator had. A royal dynasty and great families with some occassional 'great people' who can establish their own clans. The family trees and interactions would be more limited than CK.
Research: filling-up bars like in CK or Imperator, but with a twist: your bars are influenced by actions you actually do in the game (a kind of experience based on actions) and the 'researchers' would just add modifiers. Research areas would be Warfare, Stewardship, Governance, Exploration and Religion& Culture.
-- the research 'tree' would be a sort of mix of EU4s idea groups organized in Imperator's web. One research area would have multiple unlockable trees.
- Missions:
Not a big change, but missions would have multiple ways to be solved, while remaining in the same general topic (for example, "Self-sufficient Joseon" would not be hitting a particular number of stability, but could be achieved by several ways).
Setting:
A shorter EU. Essentially from 1330s to the 1650s or start of 1700s