Migration/Refugee Mechanics

Hi everyone!

Very very long time EU4 player here (~4-5k hours). Very excited for EU5. I watched the pre-release stream yesterday and wanted to discuss how pops move.

This absolutely must play a major role in the game, but I did not see much discussion about this.

I played Imperator Rome. I understand migration attraction and stuff generally, but never dug into the weeds.

I’m hoping that in EU5 they’ve taken that system and made it much more thorough/explainable.

For example, if 100,000 pops live in Constantinople when it is sieged in 1453, there really should be several thousand pops that flee all over Europe. EU4 sometimes models refugee mechanics with events that occasionally sprinkle development over your provinces. I’m hoping they do this well in EU5.

I was thinking that, perhaps, migration should scale strongly with a EU4-devastation-like mechanic. Raze the whole province, and maybe up to 50% of the people flee. Siege it with minimal damage, maybe 5%.

The big question is: where do those 5%-50% go? I feel like it should be weighted strongly towards nearby provinces, but I also think that more well-to-do pops should be able to flee much farther away. For example, perhaps some pops from a Constantinople siege find themselves in Vienna, Jerusalem, Moscow, or Sevilla.

I also think that pops should flee towards places that share similar culture or religion. But I also want to see pops that go on some insane migration pathing. Not a lot, only a tiny amount. Like, I wanna see a Polish burgher in Canton in 1543 on some Marco Polo type shit, u feel me?

I feel like pops should find an equilibrium in places that are prosperous and peaceful for long periods of time. These can be pacifistic countries that stay out of trouble or hegemonic military powers. It should make sense to have to see pops fleeing from regions that are under constant dispute. I also think that nations should have some sorts of policies that affect foreign migration. This could be related to what I said earlier in the sense that maybe you could engineer your country to be very xenophobic on the basis of culture and religion so refugee pops don’t like coming to your lands.

In the end, I hope to see active and passive pop migration mechanics that work well and are fun. I recall migration in Victoria 2 and 3 feeling extraordinarily uncontrollable, which made it feel like regions with high populations were static and that if I ever wanted to get more soldier pops, I HAD to invade Nigeria, China, etc. because it felt impossible to get more than a certain fraction of pops to be soldiers.

There’s a lot more to say but I hope this post gets you all thinking.

If you have any more ideas, comments, or questions please do share.

Take care and thanks for reading.