Maths and Morality in EU4

I play a lot of Europa Universalis IV. Like… 950 hours worth. (Admittedly, I have fallen asleep with it running once or twice, but still.)

The game’s all about conquest and expansion, and because it’s rooted in the real world, it’s impossible to avoid questions of morality. (They took away the Attack Natives button from EU3, but even still, no one’s fooling themselves that colonization is peaceful.) If you’re trying to justify the morality of it, you’ve got three real options: You’re out for your own greed, you’re trying to make the world better than real history, or you’re defending yourself or your cause.

(If you've got an empire this size, you probably can’t justify the next war as self-defense.)

I’ve been reading about Irish nationalism and thinking about the American Civil War; enforced unity’s been on my line lately. 

So I made maths.

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Current Morality = Taxation + Production + (Gov. Type * total development) + (Humanism * total development) – (Unrest * potential damage) – [(Culture / Discrimination) * culture’s development] – (Religion * Negative Tolerance * religion’s development) – [Nation * nation’s development * (0.1 + Unrest)] – (% War * Damage)

Morality over Time = Taxation + Production + (Gov. Type * total development) + (Humanism * total development) – (Unrest * potential damage) – [(Culture / Discrimination) * culture’s development] – (Religion * Negative Tolerance * religion’s development) – [Nation * nation’s development * (0.1 + Unrest)] – (% War * Damage) - (Lives Lost *0.005454) – (War Damage₁ + War Damage₂ …) – (Forced Conversion * converted development) – (Displaced Natives * population)

(If you mouse over each variable, there’s a small explanation.)

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Notes:

• This is still a gross simplification. It falls back on quantifiable economic indicators, rather than societal advancement.
• These equations tend to use EU4’s own internal logic. I don’t know whether a human life is worth 0.0054 ducats, but that’s the value EU4 uses. We’re also limited by conflated effects, like how unrest reduction can represent a police state as much as people being contented.
• I’ve tried to touch on struggles of humanism that don’t get much play in the actual game, like questions of how indigenous people and women are treated.
• Fine, yes, the header image was probably the result of a bug. I don't think there were actually three million artillerymen at that battle.