Europa Universalis IV

[thesecret1]

Only now do I recall that some people kept shitting on Paradox some time back about institutions elevating non-Europe far too much

It was the worst piece of shit change they made since the game launched. Utterly ruined the whole tech aspect of the game

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Doesn't seem that they spawn outside of Europe *that* often among AI nations though.

 

[thesecret1]

Doesn't seem that they spawn outside of Europe *that* often among AI nations though.

In my experience, the AI manages to more or less keep up in military technology even without any institutions present.

 

[fantadomat]

Doesn't seem that they spawn outside of Europe *that* often among AI nations though.

In my experience, the AI manages to more or less keep up in military technology even without any institutions present.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is some hidden bonus that gives them bonus mana. The AI is just too retarded to be able to keep with the player for sure.

Ahh i remember the good old time when it was fun to do a WC with eastern country,now every country is just generic.

 

[Tigranes]

Re. aboriginals, I don't know how Theodora bothers with you guys, really. It's like some shitty algorithm, "update mentions anything outside Yurop = shitty woke bad agenda!!!! conspiracy gives tanks to tribal people!!!!" Look, all the EU systems are built for a Eurocentric model of blobbery world conquest. Within the game systems, aboriginals are basically cannon fodder waiting to be exploited, and that's not gonna change. The gameplay issue is that vanilla colonisation involves no meaningful decisions or differences, you just press the same god damn buttons a million times to blob whether it's Brunei or Brazil. What they really need is qualitatively different experiences around slave trade, disease, supply chains, weather, etc., rather than just waiting until your naval range is good then shipping 80k troops around the world on your jumbo jets to land for McDonalds' takeout.

Also I thought fanta would be all for giving pointless nations accurate historical detail, after all he was on a big crusade about that for getting Romanians right or whichever sausage land he's from

 

[fantadomat]

Re. aboriginals, I don't know how Theodora bothers with you guys, really. It's like some shitty algorithm, "update mentions anything outside Yurop = shitty woke bad agenda!!!! conspiracy gives tanks to tribal people!!!!" Look, all the EU systems are built for a Eurocentric model of blobbery world conquest. Within the game systems, aboriginals are basically cannon fodder waiting to be exploited, and that's not gonna change. The gameplay issue is that vanilla colonisation involves no meaningful decisions or differences, you just press the same god damn buttons a million times to blob whether it's Brunei or Brazil. What they really need is qualitatively different experiences around slave trade, disease, supply chains, weather, etc., rather than just waiting until your naval range is good then shipping 80k troops around the world on your jumbo jets to land for McDonalds' takeout.

Also I thought fanta would be all for giving pointless nations accurate historical detail, after all he was on a big crusade about that for getting Romanians right or whichever sausage land he's from

I am evropean,you are not. Eat your mud cookies and be silent,savage.

 

[Fedora Master]

now every country is just generic.

Excuse me sweaty I think you mean every country is now BALANCED!

I don't know how Theodora bothers with you guys

Trannies and autism go hand in hand.

Within the game systems, aboriginals are basically cannon fodder waiting to be exploited, and that's not gonna change.

It's an expression of PDXs attitude towards history. There is no reason to have "nations" in Australia because there were none. Just like there is no reason to have most of Africa in CK3 because it had no meaningful contact with Europe at all. But it sure looks good to certain people who care more about their historical revisionism than accuracy.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

If aborigenitals are in, as states, do they even have cap forts that have to be sieged down? It's just such an idiotic idea, even the libtards in this thread complain about our reaction being crass, but they can't defend it.

 

[Tigranes]

Re. aboriginals, I don't know how Theodora bothers with you guys, really. It's like some shitty algorithm, "update mentions anything outside Yurop = shitty woke bad agenda!!!! conspiracy gives tanks to tribal people!!!!" Look, all the EU systems are built for a Eurocentric model of blobbery world conquest. Within the game systems, aboriginals are basically cannon fodder waiting to be exploited, and that's not gonna change. The gameplay issue is that vanilla colonisation involves no meaningful decisions or differences, you just press the same god damn buttons a million times to blob whether it's Brunei or Brazil. What they really need is qualitatively different experiences around slave trade, disease, supply chains, weather, etc., rather than just waiting until your naval range is good then shipping 80k troops around the world on your jumbo jets to land for McDonalds' takeout.

Also I thought fanta would be all for giving pointless nations accurate historical detail, after all he was on a big crusade about that for getting Romanians right or whichever sausage land he's from

I am evropean,you are not. Eat your mud cookies and be silent,savage.

Are you European? Does Serbia or whichever it is you're from actually count? I thought you guys had to conquer and pillage at least 8 different regions to count as real Europeans, as opposed to centuries of potato farming.

Within the game systems, aboriginals are basically cannon fodder waiting to be exploited, and that's not gonna change.

It's an expression of PDXs attitude towards history. There is no reason to have "nations" in Australia because there were none. Just like there is no reason to have most of Africa in CK3 because it had no meaningful contact with Europe at all. But it sure looks good to certain people who care more about their historical revisionism than accuracy.

I think what they did with the aboriginals doesn't really matter one way or another, because again the base colonisation system is just meaningless clicking on empty land no matter how it's labelled. If I saw people celebrating it as some second coming of Jesus I'd point out how stupid that is. As it is, I mostly see people crying and whining as if it is destroying Western Civilisation, so.

 

[fantadomat]

Are you European?

No,I am not,I am Evropean .

 

[fantadomat]

Establishing a colony just means you have permanent infraestructure and some people in place. It doesn't mean that all the natives are gone and part of your land. Just because you have a thousand portuguese dudes in Belém, it doesn't mean that the ten thousand Tupinambás over there will drop being pagan tupinambas and suddenly become nice little portuguese catholics.

This is rooted in the inherently flawed way in which EU4 handles cultures and religions. It's strictly binary. Either the province is fully inhabited by catholic spaniards, or it is chock full of amazonian savages, and nothing in between. They could at least set it up as percentages or something (like fresh colony - 10% spaniards, 90% natives. Then you ship in more people, it goes to 70% spaniards, 30% natives or something along those lines). Hell, most of this shit is already done in mods, like Dei Gratia straight up tracks all the religions in a province by percentage, and MEIOU at least gradually converts foreign culture to yours over a period of decades, also by percentage, and you can check that progress at any time. So EU4 CAN handle systems like these, but Paradox would first need to actually care about bettering its core mechanics.

Agreed.

I remember Dei Gratia for EUIII, it was in Magna Mundi. I assume they made it for EUIV too?

I like the idea of extending such a system to culture, too. It could also mean that many minority religions and cultures that would ordinarily not appear on the map, could appear on the map and be playable.

Hell, Paradox does that kinda stuff in Vicky, so they clearly can do that.

They had the purge mechanics in meio,was great fun parking troops on to turksih land enx genociding them.

 

[Delterius]

I'm the netherlands and I lost to ceylon.

jesus christ

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Current playthrough no. 1 trillion.

Started as Serbia, so I'm aiming to conquer Constantinople so I can get to the Empire rank through the mission tree, but first I have to conquer Cili (it is also a prerequisite for that particular mission). Not strong enough to go against the Ottomans yet though, so I'll probably go after Venice first, conquer and move my main trade city to Venezia and build up a trading fleet for some extra income.

 

[flyingjohn]

The last time I played MEIOU(and so EU4)the Renaissance, all the ‘institutions’ kept developing in China, India, anywhere except Europe. Their forum was full of booger-eating wannabe academics applauding, naturally.

Speaking of, I tossed a lil glance at reddit looking for similar criticism.
Holy shit, these people

Typical commie scum denying history.
British India history:
-The British buy small squats of land to establish forts and factories
-The Mughal empire gets completely destroyed in multiple battles against Persia and Afghanistan. Their capital is sacked and this begins the dissolution of the Mughal empire.
-The British India company smell weakness and hires a small army to take territory.They win multiple battles even with French backing the Indians
-The British figure out that they can continue and conquer the continent and you get the actual army now backing the conquest which they do easily

There was no scheming,just a declining empire getting destroyed by it competitors and somebody swooping in and taking the prize.
Technological wise,they were light years behind Muslims,let alone European powers.

The reddit post is confusing the spanish conquest of Incas with India.That was scheming with local warring tribes and diseases killing most of Incan people.Even had a red wedding type of event.

 

[FreeKaner]

Historical accuracy drivel falls on deaf ears when the same kind of people who say Maoris shouldn't be able to resist European colonization are the same type of people who want Byzantines to have easier time against Ottomans or cheer on absurd revenge fantasy events like Moldovans being able to impale the Ottoman Sultan.

It's just Risk with awkward and nonsensical trade system, paint the map that's all the game is good for.

 

[JarlFrank]

Establishing a colony just means you have permanent infraestructure and some people in place. It doesn't mean that all the natives are gone and part of your land. Just because you have a thousand portuguese dudes in Belém, it doesn't mean that the ten thousand Tupinambás over there will drop being pagan tupinambas and suddenly become nice little portuguese catholics.

This is rooted in the inherently flawed way in which EU4 handles cultures and religions. It's strictly binary. Either the province is fully inhabited by catholic spaniards, or it is chock full of amazonian savages, and nothing in between. They could at least set it up as percentages or something (like fresh colony - 10% spaniards, 90% natives. Then you ship in more people, it goes to 70% spaniards, 30% natives or something along those lines). Hell, most of this shit is already done in mods, like Dei Gratia straight up tracks all the religions in a province by percentage, and MEIOU at least gradually converts foreign culture to yours over a period of decades, also by percentage, and you can check that progress at any time. So EU4 CAN handle systems like these, but Paradox would first need to actually care about bettering its core mechanics.

Just like with the combat being simplistic shit, this could be so easily fixed by adopting pop mechanics from Victoria.

But for some reason Paradox likes to keep its systems separate. Only HoI has good combat, only Victoria has good pop and economy simulation, only CK has good character interactions.

EU can't get any good mechanics, it has to abstract everything to such a degree it becomes a joke.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Just like with the combat being simplistic shit, this could be so easily fixed by adopting pop mechanics from Victoria.

But for some reason Paradox likes to keep its systems separate. Only HoI has good combat, only Victoria has good pop and economy simulation, only CK has good character interactions.

EU can't get any good mechanics, it has to abstract everything to such a degree it becomes a joke.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a rumor like a crapload of years ago, that they (Paradox) don't actually know how the economic portion of Victoria 2 code works? Like, the code is so obscure to them due to the fact that the dev(s) who made it left the company ages ago, and they're clueless on how to replicate and implement it in modern titles?

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

I'm too lazy to verify by actually checking the official forums, but it doesn't seem like a lie to me. Lmao

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I'm too lazy to verify by actually checking the official forums, but it doesn't seem like a lie to me. Lmao

I'd sooner believe that it's a bullshit excuse for why they haven't attempted to create a sequel or to implement Vicky2's systems to their other franchises.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

I'd sooner believe that it's a bullshit excuse for why they haven't attempted to create a sequel or to implement Vicky2's systems to their other franchises.

I dunno, I haven't delved into Vicky 2 since like 2012, but I've noticed on occasions that the community, to this day, modders included, genuinely struggle to comprehend the mathematics behind certain systems within the game. After 10 years or so, the gameplay systems in Victoria 2 are still an enigma for most of the part, whereas when it comes to shit like EU4 the maths behind it are quite transparent and well known, to the point where certain streamers/youtube video makers get flak directly from paradox due to at times, pointing faulty and nonsensical mathematical operations within the game.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I'd sooner believe that it's a bullshit excuse for why they haven't attempted to create a sequel or to implement Vicky2's systems to their other franchises.

I dunno, I haven't delved into Vicky 2 since like 2012, but I've noticed on occasions that the community, to this day, modders included, genuinely struggle to comprehend the mathematics behind certain systems within the game. After 10 years or so, the gameplay systems in Victoria 2 are still an enigma for most of the part, whereas when it comes to shit like EU4 the maths behind it are quite transparent and well known, to the point where certain streamers/youtube video makers get flak directly from paradox due to at times, pointing faulty and nonsensical mathematical operations within the game.

Could be the case, I just find it highly unlikely that the devs wouldn't know what they were implementing to such an extent. Coding isn't magic and you can't just code mechanics without having some basic understanding of how they'll function (whether originally or after the fact in terms of noticing the difference between what was intended and what is happening).

 

[FreeKaner]

Victoria 2 doesn't work as intended, but that's actually a good thing.

 

[thesecret1]

I remember Dei Gratia for EUIII, it was in Magna Mundi. I assume they made it for EUIV too?

Yeah. Basically, the way it works (if memory serves) is each province has 10 religion units divided among the present religions. The religion with the most units is the one that sets the province's religion (determining if it's true faith, heresy, etc.) while the other ones get turned into province modifiers (usually giving you unrest and less manpower). Your (in)tolerance of other religions then determines how big a malus those minorities give you (I think if you go full tolerance there is no malus). Now, you can only send a priest to a province of a different religion, and the priest usually only converts about two religion units or so, so once your religion becomes the majority, you cannot send him there anymore (representing the difficulty of swaying hardline religious communities and such). You can send a priest to focus on exactly one religious minority in the region, converting usually one unit after several years (and costing you the priest for that period), which of course is too slow to use if you have a large realm full of heathens (for example after a crusade). So your other option is to literally tell the heathens (of a particular religious minority) in the nation that they will either convert immediately, or you will seize all their property and chase them from the land. This will cause about 2 units of said religion to convert to your religion in every province you own, but at the cost of massive unrest in those provinces (uprisings are basically guaranteed, and if the religion you targeted is really widespread, it can field quite big armies).

It's a really nice system that displays things that vanilla cannot, such as jewish communities across Europe, various christian or druze minorities in middle east, etc. It also makes conversion take real effort to "finish" – to truly fully convert a province means many years of investment, whether you go about it peacefully or violently, but you can still get a religious majority (which is the most important thing) at a reasonably fast rate. It's the sort of thing that makes perfect sense, gives historical depth, and gives importance to the whole religion system. And it's not even that hard to do – Parashit could easily implement this mechanic themselves, with better UI and performance, yet they don't, because they're more concerned with fucking Abbo representation than with their core mechanics

 

[thesecret1]

I dunno, I haven't delved into Vicky 2 since like 2012, but I've noticed on occasions that the community, to this day, modders included, genuinely struggle to comprehend the mathematics behind certain systems within the game. After 10 years or so, the gameplay systems in Victoria 2 are still an enigma for most of the part, whereas when it comes to shit like EU4 the maths behind it are quite transparent and well known, to the point where certain streamers/youtube video makers get flak directly from paradox due to at times, pointing faulty and nonsensical mathematical operations within the game.

Lol. No. The most complex "mathematics" will be simple division, perhaps the rare square root, just like in any code for a thing like this. What they mean with "not understand the code" is that the code is a fucking mess that's borderline unreadable, utilizing various little "hacks" to make something work, but that will stop working immediately if something somewhere seemingly unrelated gets changed. The only way to "fix" this is to delete all of it and write it again, this time properly, but that means assigning a programmer to it for weeks/months, as well as having the QA team test it for several days afterwards to catch any new bugs. That's not something the company is going to do for an old game like this – the cost/benefit ratio is too bad.

 

[Lycra Suit]

The last time I played MEIOU(and so EU4)the Renaissance, all the ‘institutions’ kept developing in China, India, anywhere except Europe. Their forum was full of booger-eating wannabe academics applauding, naturally.

Speaking of, I tossed a lil glance at reddit looking for similar criticism.
Holy shit, these people

Another case of everyone getting it somewhat right and wrong. I never bought that European weaponry is what won them their early 1vs100 victories aboard because early gunpowder tech was clunky and limited, logistics and sailing advances on the other hand...


I find the Roman conquest of Gaul to be fairly analogous to what happened in EU4's time span to many non European realms. Romans initially lacked the blacksmithing knowhow to forge weapons and chainmail as well as Gauls (they had artillery on the other hand but that was generally useless in a land where the bulkiest defensive structures were earthworks). They were generally fairly outnumbered although facing far more spontaneous levies than trained warriors. Caesar had a limited amount of men and supplies but could usually easily retreat to fortified Roman lands whenever things were becoming too heated. His funds and reinforcements only limited by his political capital back in Rome, meaning that as far as a lone Gallic tribe was concerned they were facing an opponent with seemingly limitless resources.
Had the various gallic tribes pooled their resources together more consistently they could have actually overwhelmed him but their various dissentions made more elaborate coordinated campaign strategies impossible when they weren't downright warring one another, with Caesar playing one side against the other and extracting significant concessions while oftentimes barely doing any fighting. Many Gallic aristocrats had half a mind to join the Roman republic in the first place and have a shot at being part of the senatorial aristocracy of a wealthier, perpetually growing, highly urbanized empire in the making, their loyalty often bought off with Roman money. Plenty of Gauls with pre-existing trade relations with the republic were already starting to emulate Roman culture as much as they could. Gauls also had different views on warfare, waging it in a more ritualistic and codified way than the more rational or pragmatic minded Mediterranean cultures.
So you have two people who actually hail from a close common ethno-cultural origin, are more or less at a similar stage of weapon/tool crafting and you can argue that the average Celt levy was taller and better fed than the malnourished Roman pleb he was facing. One of them ends up conquering, colonizing and assimilating the other one with a single compact expeditionary army thanks to cultural magnetism, a flexible diplomatic situation, money and above all impeccable logistics.

And all of that is probably a gross oversimplification. I don't think Paradox will ever figure out how to properly handle warfare, and I don't think they even care that much to focus on the simulation aspects of their map painters. They brand their games for the average redditor who watched at most a few pop history Utubers and wants to play off whatever random blobbing fantasy cooked in his mind in the meantime. You couldn't even build tall when the game was released, and they only implemented the necessary features because of the sheer amount of players who wanted to larp a city state without fretting too much with conquest, carpet sieging, rebels and spending all your mana points to make cores.