Europa Universalis IV

Holy shit, I've been missing a lot of dev diaries.

I am also pissed at the lack of minorities of any kind. I mean, would it be so hard to implement? It doesn't have to involve major demographics like Victoria 2, just make it so that there can be a little icon that says, "Hey, this province has a minority presence" and make shit happen.

 

Yeah it's a very glaring omission. A few province modifiers would be extremely simple to introduce.

It also means there's much less incentive for toleration because you're simply better off making the investment of a missionary and waiting the 5-20 years, after which whammo no more religious problems in that province for the rest of the game, than wasting National Ideas for a permanently inferior and troublesome province.

 

From what I remember of the EUIII vanilla, tolerance was only worth it if you were a small country in a sea of different religion-culture provinces, or played a game with the Trade League Republics. Most countries could just go on conquering and converting, and huge countries with huge cores and same-culture-religion could just splooge money on conversion no prob.

I'm playing EU2 FTG now, and damn, conversion is expensive as fuck. At least its easier to set tolerance (just adjust sliders), but any big province costs a huge bag of jewgold to convert, with a few exceptions (same culture, low population, pagan), so getting overseas territory with different culture-religion provinces is often not worth it, and if you do it is far better to use Narrowminded and wait for conversion events. I remember a Portugal game of mine with ACGCEEP I had to abandon because I was getting tired of fighting some losers in Asia and then having to spend ten years or so popping moles across the asian and east-african parts of my colonial empire.

 

So, no Byzantine in vanilla EU4 I'm guessing?

 

Why? The game starts in 1444 so they are still around.

 

Then you will be really happy to know, that Paradox not only refuse to do it in EU 4, but also remove mechanics, that allowed creating it by modders. So existence Dei Gratia mod for EU4 are now very questonable. It isn't yet clear, created they some alternative or not, but there was already pretty big drama some time ago.

Only if Paradox staff want be crucified by army of byzantinophiles, which is significant part of they customers. Even Vic2 have Byzantine as formable state.

 

Ahem! Fixed for GLORY OF ROME!

No way, its there... its just that Anatolia and the Balkans got even more provinces... and ERE is a even more smaller and pathetic little city on the tip of Thrace.

These Ottomans will never see it coming, MwhahahahaHAHAHHAHA!

 

Lol WAT? Really? I was put off by Vic2's weirdness, but man, if this is true, I need to get back into it. Although... holy hell, how? I mean, Vic2's start date is centuries after ERE existed.

Yeah, I ended up googling it after I asked the question, and it turned out the start date is still early enough to technically allow Strongest Rome to still exist. Definitely going to be interesting to see how it plays. I really wish they'd give up their love of cascading alliances for the Byzantium strategy, though, and just focus on making it difficult in gameplay fundamentals rather than silly arbitrary diplomatic ways.

 

Oh its neat. You start off as Greece and do the crazy Megali Idea, without failling that is, and become Byzantium Reborn. I never tried it because I think I'd just hate the game for not letting me take Constantinople back since its a capital.

 

You could get the tolerance of heretic and heathen religions above 0, which would remove most if not all of the penalties (certain nations like the Ottomans can actually get insanely high tolerance, greater than for their own religion). Problem of course being that NIs are ridiculously useful compare to tolerating other religions. It's not like tolerating them removes the 30 years or whatever of nationalism.

IIRC the Ottomans move their capital or something.

 

But Greeks didn't forgot, that they had Empire. So they tried to return their former territories but failed at that.
And again ERE is very popular nation amongst Paradox fans, so it isn't strange to include possibility restore it.
But I must warn you, that it is pretty hard task and require to have experience of Vic2. It much more harder than it was in EU3. Mostly because you have shit economy as Greece, and economy is all in Vic2.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

country_event = {

id = 31102 # Flight to Ankara

trigger = {
tag = TUR
NOT = { is_greater_power = yes }
capital = 860
NOT = { owns = 817 }
NOT = { owns = 816 }
NOT = { owns = 830 }
owns = 876

}

mean_time_to_happen = {
months = 1
}

title = "EVTNAME31102" #Flight from Istanbul
desc = "EVTDESC31102" #Our position in Istanbul is no longer secure. We should move our government to a safer place.
picture = "administration"

option = {
name = "EVTOPTA31102" #We have been ultimately driven from Europe...
prestige = -10
capital = 876
}

In other words, they need to lose Bulgaria, East Macedonia and GP status, but still own Ankara.

 

All of those are pretty likely to happen too, Ottomans are generally a punching bag the moment they're not allied with one of the biggest dogs.

EDIT: Though with Greece, the real issue isn't so much the economy but the population. Due to the way army sizes are calculated, you've got a bad case of deep shit due to having such a low population (since any usual suspect GP that intervenes in your reconquest can just casually dump enough troops to drown you).

 

Yes, the population is the problem, you just cant field enough troops to defeat any great power and even handling the OE alone is difficult. Especially if they do some naval invasions.

 

Can someone help me with this topic?
http://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.ph...or-europa-universalis-ii-for-the-glory.84734/
Much appreciated.

Anyway, what are you guys thinking of the new mechanics and the end of old ones like sliders?
I think it was time sliders wernt away, but they needed IMHO a substitute in place. IMHO the idea system can't do it, ideas only have good benefits, not bad ones.
I'm playing EU2 FTG now and before I attack a country I always look at their sliders to see how well my troops will do against them. For example, I did quite well when me and Aragon invaded France because my 9 Quality +9 Offensive cavalry troopers often defeated 30k french cannonfodder on plains. Without sliders I would've been drowned by sheer numbers, and that France was weakened by other wars.

I only fight enemies with superior naval sliders when I have a large naval superiority in numbers, or when they're oceanic powers with big ships and I'm a mediterranean power that can just roflpwn them with galleys.

 

Centralization and serfdom were very one-sided. But I liked the idea of long modernization process, which you need to accomplish in order for your country to success. Especially since countries which have no political will to do it failed in real life. But it can be accomplished via decisions, so I place my hopes on modders.
Aristocrasy as idea group or slider doesn't make much sence. And it representation already was abstracted by centralization and serfdom. But it can be some modifier, which gives some military bonuses, but gradually weakens as you proceed with your reforms.
Free market doesn't belong in that time period and new trade system better abstracted it anyway. So who cares?
Religion sliders was the most balansed amongst them. But ortodox and muslim have new mechanics, which is alternative to it.
And military sliders didn't have much sence as binary choises. How you can choose between quality and quantity for French army, when in real life it was both in the same time?

 

The quality/quantity slider didn't make much sense anyways because the most populous countries were the ones who could "afford" high quality.

 

Centralization was intentionally one-sided, through I dislike it because I think its deterministic. Why can't feudalism survive and everyone centralizes? That said, descentralization was often used for one single porpouse: World Conquest, which IMHO makes sense. It was alll it was good for, really.

Serfdom seems very one-sided in EU2, I don't remember it being bad in EU3. In EUII it was bad because it racked up your stability costs to hell, only worth it if you were going to be intentionally small, mono-religious and plutocratic. Big expanders like Portugal, Castille, England, France and Russia didn't work with it.

Yeah, I think the trade system could've been done better.

True, true.
My big problem with sliders is that staying in the centre is the worst position of all: No bonus, no penalty.
That said, Ideas only give bonuses, don't it? I don't like it one bit, I liked how you had to make hard choices and swallow when it came to sliders.

Seriously bro, help me with that patch plz, I wanna play more recent mods!

I remember in EU2 and EU3 using a high quantity french army and winning by essentially overwhelming my enemies and their fortress with sheer numbers of disposable cannonfodder. Racks up WW to hell if you don't descentralize, through. Good for World Conquest, however. Manpower is gonna be even more precious in EUIV, so I think quantity will get a overhaul.

I usually play colonial countries (Portugal) with Quality sliders so I can focus my tech development in trade and infraescture (navy too in EU3) to give me more jewgold while I beat natives with better tech + better sliders. Spending on land with, say, Portugal, is a waste of time because your neighboors will give you all land research you need and you're not going to be fighting epic battles with equal european armies, but against inferior afro-asiatic armies.

 

With France, I bet you can set the slider anywhere and field a better army than most other nations.

 

Sliders were a good idea as anything that helps you customize your nation but unfortunately the options were badly thought up. Not only the centralization/decentralization but others too, especially social ones like aristocracy/plutocracy/theocracy.

I guess sliders would need to be seriously reworked to work properly, perhaps with added laws system and some basic way to represent different holdings within the province. Like having feudal divisions or church lands in a visible way and not abstracted to 25 gold once you reform...

 

I think HRE and PLC were very colorful exapmles, why you don't want your country be decentralized

You are pushed towards Free Subject by events, which is pretty stupid. Contrary, moving towards Free Subject must be very hard for the most countries and doing that must piss your elite.
And Free Subject gives your better technology and better army, which is superior than reduction of stability. And if you want to reduce stability cost, it was much better stay narrowminded. Even after westernization some players preffer move that slider back.

In vanilla you leave your slider in center only when you don't want waste your policy change on it. But MM tried to improve it and gave player bonuses if he stayed in [-2;2] interval for all sliders.

Yes, even clearly negative ones, like serfdom. And that is realy sucks. But maybe there are some events, which can fire if you have that particular idea.

Sorry, I don't own that game. And I don't see in the internet anybody, who cares enough to follow that game recent uptades. Even threads on strategy forums didn't have new posts for about several months.

 

Yes, but we can take over the world in this game, so being forced to decentralize or your empire desintegrates is very sensible. Kinda hard to rule a centralized Europe-spanning empire in that time.

Better tech and army ins't superior to reduction of stability when you own a large empire. Stab-hit don't hurt small countries, but a big empire (especially those humongous multi-ethnic multi-religious ones) can collapse under low stability. I prefer to have a shittier army and slower tech if it compensates in a more stable empire with less revolt risk and more income. In EU3 it wans't that bad if I remember right but in FTG as I'm playing now I start to move to serfdom once I got a secure empire with decent allies and capable of constantly building large armies.

 

In your thread.

 

I think, main proble there is not, that "centralization always good" mechanic not properly representing such giant empires, but that player can create such empires in the first place with no significant drawback. You can make a point, that the empire in order to be successful must grant it's subjects some degree of autonomy and take situation under direct control only when local authorities can't properly deal with it. But relatively sliders it is somewhere in the middle.
And I think, disappearance of feudalism in EU time frame no more deterministic, than disappearance of absolute monarchies in Vic time frame. That system clearly already outlive itself at the begining of the game, so no much point to complain about railroading.

I didn't play vanilla games don't remember how much long, but I don't remember stability be that much of problem. CAD + narrowminded/serfdom must be more than sufficient.
And CAD + narrowminded > CAD + serfdom. It also help transform your multi-religious empire into mono-religious one. And there are goverment buildings that very useful for large countries.

Greece have a decent army for its size. It is enough to deal with Turks after establishing tech advantage and establishing tech advantage against Ottomans is a trivial task. Been in UK sphere and been allied with Russia solve most of my problems. Troubles begans when Ottomans cease been GP and been sphered by said UK or Russia. But until they lose they GP status my problems weren't about fielding sufficient army and navy, but properly financing them.
From what I see, difficulty of playing as Greese is inversely proportional to success of Ottomans to stay in top 8 as long as possible. Especially with crisis mechanic.

 

Yes, but what about a big, sprawling empire? Makes sense to descentralize it in order to manage it properly.

Feudalism was on its way out in Portugal and France by 1400, true. In England it was starting. But not on eastern europe, Africa, Middle-East and Southeastern Asia. Nothing inevitable about it.

IMHO the biggest problem of EU3 is that due to simplification and lacking the dinastic mechanics of CKII, you essentially have Westphalian states two hundred years before such a thing ever existed in the west, but Paradox gonna Paradox. This is why IMHO the best Grand Strategy game ever would be a mix of EU and CK mechanics, from 1000 or so until 1820. HRE is the only exception.

Stability is only a problem in vanilla with ridiculous holdings, but in Magna Mundi or most other mods you're going to be assraped by rebelion and poverty if you have a big domain and stab slips to -1 for a long time. Go play MMU, do something to dump China stability to -3, grab some popcorn and watch the fireworks.

 

You don't even need Narrowminded or CAD after the early game (the real reason to have CAD in vanilla is that it considerably speeds up Cultural Assimilation events and enables Gilded Iconography cultural decision). Just shifting all of your non-treasury spending to Stability makes it clear within two years at most. Stability is only a problem if you don't put money into it.