Europa Universalis IV

[Fedora Master]

it's difficult to find when to play a paradox game. not on launch because sequels have most of the features stripped, you must wait a couple years of expansions before considering it, then not on expansion day because it introduced just too many new gamebreaking bugs to be playable, but also you can't wait too long or a new patch will hit and it'll break your games. it gets exponentially harder if you're fond of mods.

And if you get in too late it's so bloated as to be incomprehensible.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

someone here doesn't know what "aurora 4x" is.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

GE is has EU4 modders but only a small number and they are late additions.

blast from the past

Poor Ubik, dude literally got committed because he spent too much time on the computer and alone.
I hope he is well, wherever he is.

I've seen arguments that Ubik didn't have any mental issues and that his family was just bigoted against the pc-masterrace.

Well now he has one thanks to them, depression!
Yay!

 

[None]

it's difficult to find when to play a paradox game. not on launch because sequels have most of the features stripped, you must wait a couple years of expansions before considering it, then not on expansion day because it introduced just too many new gamebreaking bugs to be playable, but also you can't wait too long or a new patch will hit and it'll break your games. it gets exponentially harder if you're fond of mods.

And if you get in too late it's so bloated as to be incomprehensible.

Or if you play long enough the game is also so bloated and full of poor design choices that you prefer to play an older version.

 

[kangaxx]

Is North America still broken ? Last time I tried the power gap between weakass colonial nations and overpowered natives was hilariously unbalanced

I think it's still broken, even though they've tried to fix it.

I'm doing a NL run (broken nation btw) and have arrived to the NA party a bit later than Castille. You now have a Mil tech 12 Castilian CN in 1600 being eaten in chunks by the native tribes... it's pretty retarded. I haven't even intervened.

 

[Frozen]

Is there a way to fix crashed game?
Some total random shit I get exit to desktop every time August 1st 1598 in this one run
Pirated of course would never give a dime to these greedy bastards

 

[Stavrophore]

Theres a humble bundle with all DLCs for 18 euro.

 

[Incantatar]

Theres a humble bundle with all DLCs for 18 euro.

Not after I've read the past few pages.

 

[Riddler]

New Anbennar update out with a metric shit-ton of new content. Played a bit and it seems varied and fun.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dumb chinklike lore, when a lot of stuff was still incomplete or not working.

 

[Riddler]

There is other new content as well. Dwarves, ogres, kobolds and even some human content. Not everything is Wuxia/weaboo stuff.

 

[thesecret1]

There is other new content as well. Dwarves, ogres, kobolds and even some human content. Not everything is Wuxia/weaboo stuff.

It's pretty good tbh. The content is very varied and different countries actually play very differently. Took several different countries for a spin (on iron man) and got my ass handed to me :D From the new content, I tried playing the Japanese-styled ogre nation, and the martial arts monks south of them. Very different in many ways, but in the end (and I suspect this applies to playing anything in the region) it's all fun and games up until The Command comes knocking, which is usually run ending.

In the old content, I've tried some of the nations in the tunnels and, well... Only play this if you're patient, because you'll just be starting at the screen and waiting for the colonists to do their job for the first 100 years.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can beat the command the same way you beat Ming in EU4, just rush to tech 6/7/8 before they do and either have some cash stockpiled for mercs or take loans and wipe them out at a 3:1 K : D ratio. It's quite easy as the Oni because they get the monstrous CB which is superiority so you'll get like 60 WS just for winning some battles and merely need to siege a single fort. And the AE for expanding anywhere else as the Oni is incredibly awful, so you basically have to fight the Command if you want to be a GP in reasonable time (though the guys to the north are also an option but they don't have much).

 

[thesecret1]

You can beat the command the same way you beat Ming in EU4, just rush to tech 6/7/8 before they do and either have some cash stockpiled for mercs or take loans and wipe them out at a 3:1 K : D ratio. It's quite easy as the Oni because they get the monstrous CB which is superiority so you'll get like 60 WS just for winning some battles and merely need to siege a single fort. And the AE for expanding anywhere else as the Oni is incredibly awful, so you basically have to fight the Command if you want to be a GP in reasonable time (though the guys to the north are also an option but they don't have much).

Yeah, I made the mistake of taking the scenic route and going along with the mission tree rather than dealing with the elephant in the room. Then they jumped at me with a 90k doomstack against my 30k, all the while on equal grounds technology-wise, AND while I was already in the middle of a war with a rival country.

 

[Higher Game]

Giga Byzantines.

 

[Higher Game]

Giga Byzantines.

Guess we can consider the Roman-Sassanid Wars won at last.

1610, less than two hundred years and you already own x2 more development than the 2nd place. Incredible.
Weird expansion path, but guess you took the path of least resistance.

Is that a PU with Muscowy?

Seems like its time to take over the Middle East and regain the Imperial Province of Egypt. Might wanna get a friendly Abyssinia there, too, so you can keep East African muslims away.

And then... the inevitable reconquest of Rome itself!

Nah, just an alliance. This was an administrative/influence/religious/diplomatic run.

I'm going to try a PU centered strategy in my next Byzantine run, though, based on the aristocratic/espionage/influence/administrative ideas. Aristocratic/espionage means very strong cavalry (and powerful siege too, from both the spies and siege ability from espionage and the leader pips from aristocratic's +1 leader siege bonus as well as the army tradition decay reduction bonus ultimately meaning lots of +3 siege leaders) for anyone with the cossacks estate and a surge of early game strength, but those opening ideas are also a crypto long term investment for any Christian nation because those 2 extra diplomats can "cover" 4 former allies with favor currying to keep favors above 90, for the heir. Favor currying isn't just winning favors but also preventing the favor decay that occurs when you don't have an alliance. And of course favor currying for trust is how you get allies in the most distant regions of Europe anyway that would otherwise be too isolated. Influence comes in third for annexations, and finally administrative for the governing capacity. PU's are very RNG dependent but if they line up just right it's not hard to imagine a 3500-4000 development Byzantium by this time.

Poland/Commonwealth is a primary enemy of Byzantines because you really want those +2 merchants from Krakow to secure the trade wealth of Asia (and I got a border friction CB here). The Balkans actually don't really matter (except the Kosovo gold mine of course) but they're the path of least resistance so often you can't miss them. And the Mamluks actually make a great ally if you can get the wealth of Persia and eventually India going through Astrakhan and then Crimea, skipping Syria. Byzantines don't really need the religious benefits anyway, and Muscovy for some reason never seems to be that strong, in this case even failing to dominate Astrakhan in the first place.

 

[Higher Game]

Aristocratic/espionage/influence/administrative this time, very similar results but I have a young heir in Portugal, so slightly better. Only union I got was Bohemia, but I barely missed Austria and Ethiopia and France rivaled me from out of nowhere despite an alliance. And Denmark lost to pretender rebels or something weird, because I had my dynasty there too. Sometimes you build trust first to prevent rivalry, but sometimes it's better to go for the heir ASAP. These ideas are much stronger early on, but soon mana becomes a bottleneck not just because of lacking coring and annexing cost reduction, but putting up with mediocre heirs just because they're of your dynasty.

I'd say these ideas are stronger in general for Eastern Christians (and Poland!) but the RNG can hold you back much more too.

And looking back I should have no CBed Spain just to get Alhambra, instead of running level 5 advisors for the mana. El Escorial, too, and the gold mine. I could have used an alliance break on Portugal and then called in France when they were my ally. Yes claiming the throne of Spain/Castile is epic but those key provinces are too, heh.

 

[Higher Game]

Almost my first 5000 dev by absolutism Russia run if I wrap up this succession war. The trick to getting this big is getting a golden age ASAP and using the "transfer subject" power on Sweden and Lithuania (you need a couple regular wars first) and then making 50+ farm estates in your first strategic bankruptcy debt cycle. After that you can use at minimum level 3 advisors from then on.

Also, using the winter palace to diplo vassalize HRE nations is probably better than those central Asian vassals. I could go for military hegemony now but the Ottomans still count as a "rival" so I don't need to for the power projection. I just forgot to insult them in the screenshot.

 

[thesecret1]

I took the new MEIOU 3.0 mod for a spin. For those of you that don't know, it's an attempt to move EU4 towards being simulationist, and essentially turns it into a different game entirely by replacing virtually every mechanic in the game, while adding its own. The mod is still in an alpha state (meaning not everything is finished), but is in a playable state.

My first impression is: Holy shit, what is this autistic hell I got myself into? There are pops that are about equal to Victoria 2's in terms of their complexity, there are different industries in every province (that you can invest in, as can your estates), there's many different kinds and tiers of infrastructure... After spending way too much time studying their guides and tooltips and stuff, I realized that the best way to deal with this information overload is to simply ignore it – all the shit I named is on the micro level and, while interesting, it's not something one needs to or should touch unless he's got some specific plan what to do with it. The devs seem to think the same, as they provided an automated tool that basically manages all this autistic micro for you (with you just setting how much money you want to give the tool to develop provinces with).

Second thing to notice is significantly more interesting, and, to me, forms the actual meat of the game – the entire estates system was replaced with, basically, internal politics – you manage the various power brokers in the nation, their influence, try to pass reforms and change laws, placate unruly factions, etc. It's actually really well done – everything that goes down in your nation is connected to internal politics one way or another, and you constantly feel actually threatened by the local nobility and similar shit. For example, manpower – until you gradually (over the course of in-game centuries) switch to state-paid standing army, you are relying on feudal levies, especially in early game. That means all the manpower is provided to you by the nobility. That means that if you piss your nobility off, your manpower goes fucking poof! And not just manpower, but your force limit too! And it's not coming back until you make friends with the nobles again – reforming your country too fast is a sure way to make your country implode in this and similar ways. There's really a shitload of various privileges and laws and what not to consider that affect virtually EVERYTHING, from macro to micro, and that have stringent requirements to reform (reform for the better, that is), and even so, it's still just a sneak peek, essentially, since only two estates are actually fully finished right now, the others still being in development, with yet more laws to come.

Third thing to notice is the assload of other mechanics like the whole autonomy shebang or corruption shit and such – new mechanics that change the way you play the game (for example, the further away from your capital a province is, the higher its autonomy will be. You can remedy this by upgrading your roads, upgrading the capital, etc. Gamechanger for big empires, basically), but they're fairly simple to understand.

Finally, there's the performance – predictably, it runs like total shit. Not unplayably, but damn, it's slow. On fastest settings, an in-game month is going to take like half a minute. On the flipside, there's a lot of shit to do now rather than just keep waiting for shit to happen thanks to all the internal politics and micro shit, but still.

Seems pretty incline overall. I don't think I'll be in the mood to try to understand the micro anytime soon (I hope that at some point, they'll try to somehow present all that shit better, because as of right now, it's basically an information avalanche that opaque in what exactly it means and how you can affect it). You guys should give it a try and see for yourselves – it'll seem absolutely overwhelming at first, but, as I said, if you ignore all that micro, you'll find it's not actually all that complicated.

 

[Average Manatee]

I had basically the same conclusions when playing it. The economy and pops are interesting to look at it, but you have to automate it in large empires and in small empires it's really unclear whether anything you are doing has an effect and whether its positive or negative. Estates are nice but the mod's pace of development is glacial, nothing has been added to them since the initial 3.0 release.

 

[thesecret1]

I had basically the same conclusions when playing it. The economy and pops are interesting to look at it, but you have to automate it in large empires and in small empires it's really unclear whether anything you are doing has an effect and whether its positive or negative. Estates are nice but the mod's pace of development is glacial, nothing has been added to them since the initial 3.0 release.

I tried messing with manual investment, and found you can implode your economy real easy with it The things you do there absolutely do have an effect, it's just not the effect you are hoping for – it's really all too opaque, and there's too much of it for me to waste time with trying to figure it out. Here's hoping they manage to present it in some better way.

And yeah, they're slow, but that's just how it goes with big mods. If they end up making something great (and they seem to be on the track to that), the wait will be worth it.

 

[Average Manatee]

I tried messing with manual investment, and found you can implode your economy real easy with it The things you do there absolutely do have an effect, it's just not the effect you are hoping for – it's really all too opaque, and there's too much of it for me to waste time with trying to figure it out. Here's hoping they manage to present it in some better way.

Yeah it definitely matters in some way, it's just such a delayed response (and the game speed is so slow) that it's basically impossible to conduct a cause-and-effect test to see how good or bad something is.

And yeah, they're slow, but that's just how it goes with big mods. If they end up making something great (and they seem to be on the track to that), the wait will be worth it.

Well, it's been 9 months with basically nothing but bugfixes for estates and the other deeper systems like economy and autonomy. I'm hoping that it's because they are going to roll out things like finished estates all at once rather than piecemeal but until then seeing updates that are just "we fixed a bug and added some events for incan minors" diminishes hope a lot.

 

[thesecret1]

Yeah it definitely matters in some way, it's just such a delayed response (and the game speed is so slow) that it's basically impossible to conduct a cause-and-effect test to see how good or bad something is.

I actually tried and noticed that, for example, investing 50 gold into mines built around 100 units of mines all at once... But those mines then, instead of manking me money, started costing me money. I thought that maybe there's not enough labour, but it seemed like there was enough of it in the population view – either it was because of something else, or the population view didn't update yet. It's this sort of thing that hampers my understanding the most – I see the effects, but I cannot determine their cause. It's at that point I decided to just leave everything to the auto invester, with the idea of "the more money I throw at it, the better things will be" and it seemed to work well enough.

Well, it's been 9 months with basically nothing but bugfixes for estates and the other deeper systems like economy and autonomy. I'm hoping that it's because they are going to roll out things like finished estates all at once rather than piecemeal but until then seeing updates that are just "we fixed a bug and added some events for incan minors" diminishes hope a lot.

I wouldn't get my hopes up in that regard – a year or two is nothing when it comes to modders, and with how much crap they put into the game, I fully expect them to spend an eternity and a half bugfixing and balancing what they have before adding more stuff. That's probably why they call it an alpha rather than a beta. Still, it will be done eventually.

 

[Axioms]

These guys are really at the point where they might be better off making their own game. All the map and nation stuff is replaced by the modders already so no legal issues there. The mechanics and UI are stretched to the limit. The game is substantially different enough that they probably wouldn't get sued.

Presumably they'll move some of this stuff over to Grey Eminence if it ever releases, as the modding options are superior and the performance should be better using the GE engine.

I am glad that these mods get decent audiences since it means there's a market for Axioms. They might be more autistic than me development wise and with less impact, too.

 

[Manfred]

I took the new MEIOU 3.0 mod for a spin. For those of you that don't know, it's an attempt to move EU4 towards being simulationist, and essentially turns it into a different game entirely by replacing virtually every mechanic in the game, while adding its own. The mod is still in an alpha state (meaning not everything is finished), but is in a playable state.

My first impression is: Holy shit, what is this autistic hell I got myself into? There are pops that are about equal to Victoria 2's in terms of their complexity, there are different industries in every province (that you can invest in, as can your estates), there's many different kinds and tiers of infrastructure... After spending way too much time studying their guides and tooltips and stuff, I realized that the best way to deal with this information overload is to simply ignore it – all the shit I named is on the micro level and, while interesting, it's not something one needs to or should touch unless he's got some specific plan what to do with it. The devs seem to think the same, as they provided an automated tool that basically manages all this autistic micro for you (with you just setting how much money you want to give the tool to develop provinces with).

Second thing to notice is significantly more interesting, and, to me, forms the actual meat of the game – the entire estates system was replaced with, basically, internal politics – you manage the various power brokers in the nation, their influence, try to pass reforms and change laws, placate unruly factions, etc. It's actually really well done – everything that goes down in your nation is connected to internal politics one way or another, and you constantly feel actually threatened by the local nobility and similar shit. For example, manpower – until you gradually (over the course of in-game centuries) switch to state-paid standing army, you are relying on feudal levies, especially in early game. That means all the manpower is provided to you by the nobility. That means that if you piss your nobility off, your manpower goes fucking poof! And not just manpower, but your force limit too! And it's not coming back until you make friends with the nobles again – reforming your country too fast is a sure way to make your country implode in this and similar ways. There's really a shitload of various privileges and laws and what not to consider that affect virtually EVERYTHING, from macro to micro, and that have stringent requirements to reform (reform for the better, that is), and even so, it's still just a sneak peek, essentially, since only two estates are actually fully finished right now, the others still being in development, with yet more laws to come.

Third thing to notice is the assload of other mechanics like the whole autonomy shebang or corruption shit and such – new mechanics that change the way you play the game (for example, the further away from your capital a province is, the higher its autonomy will be. You can remedy this by upgrading your roads, upgrading the capital, etc. Gamechanger for big empires, basically), but they're fairly simple to understand.

Finally, there's the performance – predictably, it runs like total shit. Not unplayably, but damn, it's slow. On fastest settings, an in-game month is going to take like half a minute. On the flipside, there's a lot of shit to do now rather than just keep waiting for shit to happen thanks to all the internal politics and micro shit, but still.

Seems pretty incline overall. I don't think I'll be in the mood to try to understand the micro anytime soon (I hope that at some point, they'll try to somehow present all that shit better, because as of right now, it's basically an information avalanche that opaque in what exactly it means and how you can affect it). You guys should give it a try and see for yourselves – it'll seem absolutely overwhelming at first, but, as I said, if you ignore all that micro, you'll find it's not actually all that complicated.

While the mod is good, the devs are not so much. I had a friend, who was willing to help expand some of the MEIOU code, get kicked out of the discord, all because he had beef with a guy the devs were friends with. Beef he didn't start nor wanted to get invested in, but had all the same, as the other guy had accused him of doxxing and was following him through various discord servers, trying to get him banned everywhere. Course he also used some screens from another server, of him saying some non-politically correct stuff to justify this attempt at getting him banned on the MEIOU server. My friend only learned about what was going on on the day of, where instead of banning him directly, they put him in a timeout box and gave the impression that he would be judged or something like that. In the end his defence got ignored and he got banned.

Guess this type of autism would explain why their mod is so autistic.