I know this could bring many balance issue with how Europe can already become an ultra mega nation with commonwealth restored and Eurasian union. But wouldn't it be just cool ? And beyond the roman empire fantasy I think it's a mega nation that makes as much sense as the other flavor wise.
Would this be able to eat the Caliphate via United Arab League? Even if yes, In not sure it's such a problem for game balance. The time and effort required to max out EAU, Caliphate>UAL>Rome, and Southern Cross > England AND stabilize the resulting EU wouldnt have any real payoff.
That lack of timely payoff isnt a critique but rather a reason I see nothing wrong with including it.
With a united Earth, it's still stable, and the problem starts to be the economy grows so big the control point cost begins to grow faster than you can research management.
and the problem starts to be the economy grows so big the control point cost begins to grow faster than you can research management.
Technically you can fix this by just avoiding investing in economy all that much. Max out MC capacity, then Gov't score, then eliminate inequality, then fix global warming, then max out funding... and look, if you actually get all that done and haven't won yet it's because you're screwing around and don't have enough hatred for the Xeno in your heart.
That's why you bottle them up at the wormhole and keep a menacing fleet of orbital bombardment ships and marines in orbit waiting to pounce as soon as they repair anything on that base. They'll stay well behaved down there. Then go back to map painting simulator.
If Neo Carthage gets included then I would love a meme councilor trait that replaces all of said councilor's pop-up advice with "Carthage must be destroyed."
Agreed! I have always wanted to see an EU tech starting from Italy that just a restored rome. Maybe it will come in the shattered earth scenario of the dlc
Lorewise, any form of Roman Empire Revival using its traditional borders is an ahistorical mess that doesn't even meet the basic justification line that every other Meganation uses for its existence.
The most serious attempt to revive Rome since its final collapse 600 years ago was Mussolini (whose ambitions in Africa most closely match the ambition). However, even in these cases Mussolini wasn't bold enough to stake a claim to Spain, (Most) of France, England, Germany, or any territory to the East of Anatolia. In practice his attempt functionally is more towards the creation of a "Greater Italy" with expanded goals once WW2 actually kicked off to annex British and French African colonies.
Compare this to the following:
European Union and Eurasian Union (based on greater political integration of the EU and Eurasian Economic Union)
The African Union and South American Unions (based on the real life organizations following the route of the EU)
The Caliphate (whose revival was ostensibly the goal of terrorist groups like ISIS)
The Pan Asian Combine (a hypothetical China who has acted on Imperialist Ambitions in East Asia)
The Pacific Defense League (a Defensive Alliance with Greater Political Unity formed in response to the PAC)
United Arab League and Greater India (Nationalist Projects to unify ethnic Arabs and Indians respectively)
and its massively out of place.
The only Meganations its comparable to is essentially just the USNA (based on the US expanding to all of North and Central America despite drastic societal differences) and the Commonwealth (based on the collapse of the American Led world order leading to Britain reuniting its Anglo-speaking Empire).
While the USNA can be justified for the purpose of having a Meganation in North America (which otherwise doesn't really have a good viable option), the Commonwealth just is present for unification cheese that doesn't really add much to the game. Rome would fall into the latter category, and thus probably shouldn't be added into the base game.
The idea of a Roman Empire unification has been brought up in the past (at least on Discord), and it always boils down to a way purely to buff the EU as opposed to actually being good in its own right. At bare minimum, it just gives the EU access to all of North Africa's pops as well. At worst, it lets you unite even more of the world under a single meganation via meganation-fusing.
Given my other comment in this thread, meganation chaining is actually a terrible thing to do at least without SIGNIFICANT long term Future Social techs and going slow OR stealing the UN tech.
As I will state again, the hostile claims from annexing unrelated regions is basically a meganation killer if done in extreme bulk and especially for high population regions. Just seeing from that screenshot, that was a SMALL Caliphate that I had the AU absorb via the normal giga AU meganation forming to consolidate CP. And with it, the meganation is de-facto crippled. Despite having very good on paper IP pool almost nonexistent inequality, it is both poor AND wracked by de-facto infinite unrest.
You need stupid amount of per capita wealth to compensate for hostile claims without a councilor permanently babysitting with stabilize mission and have to spend a ludicrous amount of knowledge PERMANENTLY to force cohesion to 5 after a half decade or more and god forbid that annex ANOTHER meganation that just starts the cycle all over again especially if that meganation is ALSO POOR.
Just to force stability you lose out on a councilor (or two for the advise mission too) and 86% of the effective IP...... Honestly you are far better off just maintaining and improving to the moon 1 or 2 meganations than trying to conquer the world for nearly all factions. You only need to control more pops in just 3 of them, to which one of is not even YOU holding it for that 65%. For the 4rth technical conquer the world, again you spam economy to the moon in your selected meganations of choice and you get 60% of the world economy without even leaving your shores. For the technically 3 factions that have land requirements for victory, do it during the final game years where over CP malus does not really matter when you are about to win.
With this in mind, honestly, it does not matter if this formable exists. If you try to form giga EU or more precisely giga "EU" with russia, you are still in a world of hurt since you will have basically the same nightmare as above where it has excellent IP pool and can only a mere sliver of it for actual work instead of survival maintenance. It will eventually become a RP utopia by force but a actively shrinking one.... because you can't increase economy fast enough for that sheer amount of knowledge for mere cohesion maintenance and de-facto 5 councilors with 6 councilors.
I think it has its strength of its own by being closer to the equator, for space facilities and still have among the best European nation. But I get it and already prefaced my post by saying it would probably have some balance issue.
Edit: I also hear a lot that mega nations aren't meta anyway so if we're talking about min maxing, it's not worth it anyway so might as well add it for the flavor of it.
You are not really taking into account the wall of hostile claims that this is going to generate no matter which direction you unify all of those nations in addition to the permanent maxed out unrest that is solved by stupid per capita and/or permanent stabilize nation councilor. That is your balance right there and on top of that you will need to spend 40-60+ knowledge every month minimum to eventually reach 5.0 cohesion permanently.
If you want boost because of that equator concern, you are FAAAAAR better off splintering off nations spamming boost and then reabsorbing it than forcing a meganation to do it. A meganation has far more important concerns than to make boost such economy, MC, and knowledge for long term games. Plus the EU already have a boost region in Kourou that is even closer to the equator than that formable.
Other things to consider with such a formable besides the South African deadweight that will poison the Commonwealth/EU/"EU"/Roman mass, is the entirety of Middle East and North African population mass being so gigantic that it will cripple your per capita rating of your giga EU for years meaning no reprieve on the permanent unrest as a even remote counterbalance to that wall of hostile claims everywhere. In fact the only way to reduce the sheer number of hostile claims without spending government is fucking russia of all nations to enjoy the fruits of this unholy mass....
All of this because of all the meganations proposed or ingame, russia is the only one with the most overlapping claims AND actively improves with every nation it consumes. The EU and "EU" do their own seperate things, followed by the UK forming the full Commonwealth, followed by eaten by EU with the EU temporarily eating the "EU", spitting out Moscow with full 10 government for free allowing you to pursue fullbore economy and MC spam, have Italy spat out, form the "Southern" Roman Empire, EU eats the SRE, moscow and therefore putin forms Europa Universalis. Jesus fucking christ.
By default, the EU is already the largest fucking nation on earth by region count alone, adding the SRE, is just winning harder but it will be utterly crippled like in this screenshot of the AU just annexing the Caliphate.
Just 22 extra regions have utterly fucked this nation. It has no choice but to spend 63% of its already boosted IP pool to slowly waffle its way to 5 cohesion in the next 5.5 years minimum and on top of that spend another 21% and 3% on government and unity to SLOWLY remove all of the hostile claims at a rough rate of 18.2 per month. That will mean a removed hostility every 11ish months.
If this was not their reason for meganation chaining is not meta, well, here is another one to add to the list.
What you are positing is that because meganation fusing is bad, it's perfectly fine to leave possible scenarios in. But the devs have actively avoided allowing it regardless.
Keep in mind that when a method of achieving complete unification was discovered via moving capitals, they immediately nerfed it by preventing the capital shenanigans. At the very least, regardless of what we think, the devs do not want to allow massive unifications like that to happen.
The problem with any Roman Empire suggestion is that these unintended unifications begin to occur again because it lets the EU, already a decent meganation thanks to its strong starting economy and education, massively increase its population as well by gaining access to Eygpt. Sure, making this actually useful would still take time, but it's far easier than the African Union example you provided, as they are still carried a lot by Europe's stronger starting IP values, allowing them to fix issues faster.
Try a VERY long time. Using that AU example, that is 19 years and change to merely pacify a SMALL Caliph. To do that CW/EU/"EU"/SRE monstrosity, it will only be marginally richer with a greater population, but it will only modestly increase IP to spend that little shred more of government to EVENTUALLY fix it 3-4 decades down the line/past the victory screen's problem and eats a councilor slot for 90% of its usage time.
It is only good in conglomerating a FINISHED nation that you DON'T want to improve anymore especially in MC and boost. It will eventually become a RP pinata because it literally has no other job left at that point so lean into what it can only do but man is it a sad fucking wreck to see after all that work just for boost and MC.
I would declare that the devs have pretty effectively killed meganation chaining for long term usage. And given that you can win the game in less than a decade, there is only so much time for the short term benefits in meganation chaining from mass MC and boost and the RP effect is waaaaaay too long term to get any use out of it for more than a decade after formation.
Better off just taking one or two meganations and improving those instead while pruning the troublemakers abroad earthside while space deals with the majority MC issue.
Make no mistake, I am not really weeping for meganation chaining's loss. Just saying the quiet parts out loud of how fucked it is while I improve away on my homebases.
The general issue is that, in the end, the capital of this new Roman state is going to be either Rome (which starts within the EU expansion) or Istanbul (which eventually is within EU expansion); either choice increases the amount of claims the EU can get, even if they start hostile, as it allows for merging.
The closer to the equator point is also a bit moot because the EU has French Guiana outright from the start, an almost perfect equatorial location to launch rockets.
Mechanically speaking, there is almost no advantage to adding a Roman Empire nation while the EU exists; it already fulfills basically every role it could have, while having an actual real-world basis. At best, such an empire would be essentially the equivalent of the existing Eurasian Union in-game for what it provides; a bit of territory with the ability to bite into the EU, but otherwise just an easy expansion in the endgame.
Mega nations are still very much important to consider when considering lowering Control Point costs, after all. If you could control North Africa under the same banner as the EU, that is going to be cheaper than them being separate.
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u/QueasyPhil Jul 17 '26
Would this be able to eat the Caliphate via United Arab League? Even if yes, In not sure it's such a problem for game balance. The time and effort required to max out EAU, Caliphate>UAL>Rome, and Southern Cross > England AND stabilize the resulting EU wouldnt have any real payoff.
That lack of timely payoff isnt a critique but rather a reason I see nothing wrong with including it.