Europa Universalis IV

gauging interest for a new MP round, please X up below this line
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EU3+mods is better than EU4 in most ways. EU4 really dumbs down a bunch of mechanics in ways that mods can't fix due to hardcoding, though it has a more "competitive" AI to show for it.

 

This, no doubt.

But I would go with mods (MEIOU And Taxes, specifically). Vanilla EUIV is nice for the first time to get an idea, but after that, there is just more fun to be found using mods. Similar to games like Skyrim.

 

Now how could I pull that off in EU4?
(The fleet landed 300 Portuguese soldiers, forcing the lifting of the siege and relieving the fortress.) I'm not even nitpicking, the Portugese's early efforts in the Indian oceans is really impressive.

Been playing a game as the Incas. The Aztecs and myself are wrecking Europeans Expeditionary Invasion forces without even being Westernized. Never had such an easier time.
heck with these new tech rates and halved unit pipes, I wonder if you can even pull the Battle of the Pyramids and other humiliating victories against the eastern world in the 18th century.

Especially with the recent changes, colonizing as the Europeans did, in real life(tm), both in Asia and in the new world is not doable. The speed at which you can colonize and conquer the Natives will never match this :

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

If you even try to go at a quarter of their pace you'll end up fighting Hundreds of Thousands of Native rebels equipped with the finest European weaponry and being lead by the most competent generals, for some reason. It could be solved by the player being able to claim large swathes of land in the Americas without having to actively colonize them, as was the case irl, but don't tell Paradox that, thinking things through and having good ideas can, apparently, hurt them.

Neither will you ever be allowed to pull what Charles 5 pulled off in Europe, but that's an entirely different thing. They can't even parameter that in the bookmarked 1500s start dates.

Trade hasn't changed at all, it's an alternative production which requires you to blob into the trade zone to work properly. The exception of the Mediterranean where you can perhaps bully others into giving you trade power constantly every 15 years or so.
Establishing a commercial Empire with small trade posts all over the Indian oceans like the Portuguese, later the dutch, did is utterly useless.
You'll never be as comparatively powerful as Spain/Portugal were in the 15th century, without blobbing into half of France, which they never did.

Absurd Royal Unions, nonsensical diplomacy. At least Victoria managed handled realpolitik alliances and coalitions much better.

Boring map painting. The exception of water, having natural borders and border defenses is utterly useless (like in victoria). Everyone more or less understands that the goal is to blob in a circular fashion, preferably in the tip of a continent before, to minimize the numbers of worried neighbors, and following the trade zone for extra cash.

What's ironic, is that as soon as they try to change this,*trying* to make this more than a circle blobbing simulator, people start complaining that they're ruining the dull, tedious, repetitive map painting experience. It's like people are asking to be bored and kicked in the balls.

4 expansions later and nothing changed. 2 specialized trade expansions and trade is still shit.

Paradox is the best company ever <3 ~~.

 

Reading the Pdox forums is giving me pimples. And not just me, even Johan had a fit of rage.

 

Thanks for mentioning it. Looked that up and I'm pleasantly surprised

That's right. After 1 year he finally gets it, and people are giving him shit for that.

Also, using MP as a metric is a good idea. It was however foolish of him to let it slip. Complaining about that is like complaining about building the game around the idea that the AI will be decent. A player is just what you want your ideal AI to be, minus the trolls. Humane.

He's starting to get angry. He's not making his point very clear.
It's hard to present complex concepts in any other language than your native one. Why aren't their main forums Swedish? Why do Swedes have this innate reflex to scale to the world's level?


Further thoughts, he does deserve to get shit for not having thought anything through during the devellopment of the game. Unfortunately this isn't the reason behind the drama, which just proves how clueless their fanbase is.

But you also have to blame Paradox's directive. They release unfinished, broken exploitable disappointments on purpose so that they can deploy their horde of DLCs afterward and pass it as costumer support, when these are in fact equivalent to beta patches. And get praised for their outstanding support and attention to the community. The novel business concept of having a core fanbase who are dedicated to your company in itself before being dedicated to specific products. They'll never question your business model.

 

The problem is that whenever an adjustment like this comes its a knee-jerk reaction to something that happens in Johan's MP game rather than an actual well thought out change. And Paradox completely backed itself into a corner with the world conquest steam achievements. I don't give the least bit of shit about achievements but even I can figure out in 5s that their existence basically forces Paradox to make EU4 a casual map painting simulator.

Besides this, there are basic game mechanics that are just bad. And each update finds ways to make them worse. Monarch power is a joke. Trade is an abomination that somehow becomes more abominable. The whole idea of coring was dumb. Culture is hilariously stupid. NIs were just a dumb thing from the beginning. Etc etc.

 

Just out of personal interest. Is there actually anything in EU IV that you like?

 

Well, it has a really good UI and the combat AI, while far from perfect, is by far the best of any of Paradox's games to date. I could like the Coalition/AE mechanics except for the retarded restrictions on them (Can't separate peace coalition members are you fucking joking?).

I'd like it plenty more if not for the fact that EU3 did just about everything that EU4 does, better. And what it doesn't mods for EU3 did better than EU4 or any mods for EU4 do. And there's the problem of way too many features being copied from EU3 without being adapted to work with EU4 mechanics.

EU3 was shit on release, don't get me wrong. But EU3 received expansions that completely overhauled the game and make it much better, alongside excellent mod capabilities that let modders patch up most of the holes. EU4 has DLC that provide completely interchangeable 'features' (read: "make your nation stronger and the game easier by paying us money"), 2 of which were trade-oriented and somehow the trade mechanics are worse now than they were on release.

I'm sorry if not liking a distinctly inferior game that gets worse over time makes you feel bad.

 

You're overexaggerating, there has been many small stuff added to the game that definitely put it into better shape than at launch. I agree that there are a lot of badly thought out core mechanics in the game and Paradox seems shy changing them in the radical manner that would be needed.

 

There's certainly some small things but far more bad than good. Even things that I would consider "good" have lots of bad effects. Like the monarach power focus feature. Being able to tone down the stupid RNG of monarch mana is a good thing, but then you quickly learn that if you just focus military at all times you pretty much auto-win the game even as Asians vs. Europeans, because Paradox still hasn't bothered to make ADM/DIP worthwhile enough not to skip or make MIL not a complete wipeout from being 1 or 2 techs ahead.

God, EU4 just makes me facepalm thinking about how its designed. And sewing random patchwork DLC additions is not the way to fix it.

 

Overly dramatic or what? Though EU IV is far from perfect, there is almost nothing EU III did better. Trade was pointless merchant spamming, AI in III was pretty stupid compared to IV, economy mechanics were a mess, sliders essentially pointless, and so on.

 

Yeah, I can understand not liking EU IV, but liking EU3 instead? What? They're both incredibly mediocre, with EU3's only saving grace being mods, which only really polished that mediocrity. By the time divine wind was out, there wasn't a single great mod left.

 

Trade involved strategic ports to extend merchant range (as historical), and since it required cored land and cores weren't the retarded EU3 system we have, building up a trade network to get trade from Europe took centuries. Owning CoT was actually immensely valuable and worth fighting another nation to take, since you kept bigger trade bonuses and everyone else trading in the node paid you to be there. Trade leagues existed to determine who you kept as trade allies and who you shoved out of your CoTs. CoTs themselves were dynamic and you could fuck up other CoTs and make them disappear over time. Trade bonuses were more meaningful, 5% trade chance being potentially what let you go from 0 merchants to 5 merchants in nodes. Non-trade nations could establish regional dominance in their own trade nodes due to the very powerful province effects, and monopolies existed if your trade chance was high enough.

Now lets look at EU4. Completely static routes. It's literally impossible for people on the wrong side to pull trade their way, completely opposite of history where both sides could benefit. Let me reiterate that again: Literally everyone except Venice, Netherlands and Spain is gimped in trade because of the new retarded trade system. Spamming Light ships is 99% of your trade power, and once you've placed your light ships you have no interaction with trade at all. Buildings are a joke, the provinces are a joke. The west europe trade node is a joke. If you play MP then the whole thing ends up being a retarded zero-sum game where both sides spam light ships until the profit from trade = the maintenance from light ships, meaning trade is useless, and there is literally no other way to play the game.

Don't disagree. Though the most recent DW patches improved it quite a bit.

Maybe you are too dumb to understand monthly/yearly income? Economy was much better in EU3 as you received essentially 0 natural income from anything other then cores, and cores were actually not retarded things that happen in 5 years like in EU4. In EU4 absolutely everything gives you money and the only thing to dump it on is advisors (who are retardedly implemented and cost should scale with country size) or going over force limit.

Holy shit you are retarded. Sliders were incredibly important, and were the EU3 equivalent to EU4's country-specific idea line, which is stupid railroading bullshit that just buffs GPs and nerfs smaller powers for no reason at all.

 

And yet, in essence, it all reduced to higher or lower chances for successful merchant spamming.

You could, I don't know, invest in trade related NIs+idea groups...

Please enlighten me. How is that either realistic or leads to better gameplay? Or is it maybe just complexity for complexity's sake?

Like the quantity-quality slider which buffs GPs and nerfs smaller nations? Or the centralization-decentralization slider where centralization is always better? Or do you mean the fact that going narrowminded+serfdom fucks you over in the long run compared to innovative+free subjects? Does this really sound better than NI + idea group which at least give nations some specific flavor?


Btw, you seem incredibly hung up about cores and coring.

 

That's a long way to say "just go full free trade and press auto-send on most profitable CoT and forget about it". Not defending EU4 trade but you're making something that is pretty simple seem somewhat complicated.

And it all boils down to stick everything research you want (usually military/adm) and exploiting retarded inflation system to wage war.

 

I'll just point out that only thing mistaken in aleph's analysis of sliders is that Narrowminded/Innovative is actually one of the scant few sliders where both extremes (and sliders were only ever about the extremes) viable (since Free Subjects will counter the tech penalty, and Narrowminded has benefits of its own like faster Colonial Growth, lower Stability cost, no negative monthly Missionary gain, and increased Spy Defense).

 

Yes, and? You might as well as say that in the end it all reduced down to getting more money or not. A lot more money or none at all. As opposed to EUderp4 where the gameplay is "build as many lightships until marginal cost of trade ship > marginal trade gain". There, I literally summed up all the depth of EU4 in a single sentence.

Useless. I mean, wow, I can make a few more ducats a year vs. having armies ~25% stronger or being able to expand 50% faster.

Realistic - It's obviously more realistic. Yearly taxes. Duh.
Better Gameplay - Managing finances is a skill.
Complexity for complexity's sake - I'd say that EU4 is dumbing down for dumbing down's sake.

Quantity/Quality didn't favour large nations over small nations. Centralization was obviously better, but there was an opportunity cost to do it vs. other sliders and government types often had restrictions that limited your sliders, forcing you to choose between centralization or less revolt risk. Narrowminded/Innovative, Free subjects/Serfdom, Mercantilism/Free trade, Offensive/Defensive, Aristocracy/Plutocracy all were good either way. Even if you do prefer one side over the other, the massive opportunity cost of getting less/no bonuses at all for around 100 years was enough incentive not to switch.

Fuck you and your retarded EU4 "flavor". Giving babby-mode buffs to already strong nations to make them stronger isn't flavor. There is no logical justification for when I manage to conquer France as Provence and yet still am ~20% weaker in the same position than a France who did nothing at all. You know what was actual flavor? The hundreds of missions and decisions designed to guide nations along historical paths by giving incentives to replicate history, removed or nerfed into useless +prestige or +claims that no one could give a damn about.

I'm sorry that the EU4 series has the worst core implementation ever conceived. We're supposed to be playing a fucking historical simulator here. Cores in 1-3 years my fucking ass.

 

As someone who has played (and enjoyed, huge Paradox fan here) the EU games since the first one, I too am really disappointed with EU4. I had high hopes for the trade system when it was previewed but it really let me down. When I originally played EU3 I felt it was vastly inferior to EU2 but after the second expansion pack I felt that it had become a better game. After playing EU4 core I felt that it was even worse than core EU3 and my fears that it would be dumbed down after the greater reach that ck2 had in the market were confirmed (I'm thinking about monarch points and their role in the game here). I'd hoped that like EU3 a number of expansions would 'fix' the game, but from everything that I've heard that has not yet been the case.

I just wanted to chime in to throw another voice behind Average Manatee and let him know he is fighting the good fight as far as I'm concerned.

 

Average Manatee: I could write a long response and argue against all you wrote, but really what's point? Your posts make it clear that you hate EU IV with a passion, for whatever reason. You just grasp for every straw you can to argue against EU IV.

Also, you really have no idea what Cores in EU IV represent, do you?

 

Not that I want to defend EUIV but it has only been out what, 1 year ? I think it took EU3 quite a bit longer to improve significantly ( probably around Httt ?).

Which would be ?

 

Provinces that are well-integrated into their respective nation, nothing more. Not ancestral lands which have been part of the nation since time immemorial like in EU III. Just understand this and you don't have to waste anymore time complaining how EU IV "got cores wrong".

 

You're right, and so I haven't given up on EU4 yet (which is why I periodically check this thread) but iirc it has the second expansion that made EU3 fun for me so I was hoping that this EU4 'expansion' might do the same. Of course nowadays Paradox expansions are just larger dlcs so I guess another year of similar upgrades and EU4's state might be more along the lines of what I was expecting/hoping.

 

Complete bullshit. Why does the mouseover for a core say "x considers this to be one of her core provinces"? Why are cores left on land you no longer control? Why can you be forced to "revoke" a core in a peace deal? Why does retaking cores cause less AE?

The concept of a "core" province has been fairly stable throughout most Paradox games, from EU to HoI. To say that they somehow turned the concept on its head without any explanation or reasoning just because they implemented cores in a retarded fashion is stupid. The fact is that they simply implemented cores in a retarded fashion.

 

Okay, explain what the concept of core provinces in most Paradox games is?