Europa Universalis IV

[AwesomeButton]

Two questions:
1. What do you say about the new content pack? Is it remotely worth buying?
2. I remember there was a mod that was making the political map semi transparent and only colored on the edges, a lot like HoI4's, but what was it called?

It has mission trees for nations in the Baltic area, thats literally it, everything else is in the free patch. Sad that PDX have gone full retard on mission trees in EU, they are absolute cancer. Curious to see if they bring these in to Vic3.

I agree about the missions being cancer. Two days ago, I fired up Dei Gratia, which is the polished final.final version of EU2 with AGCEEP integrated. The lack of gamey, AI-helping-wheels mechanics (one of which are missions, as admitted by PDX) actually opens up so much more good uncertainty for the player.

Zoomer EUIV players seem to love missions though. Unsurprisingly "I bought the game and all the shiny DLCs, now tell me what to do in it, step by step, so I don't do anything wrong". This generation.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I would like to see truly dynamic and changing mission structure based on the game world and situation around you, but of course that would be far to difficult and costly to implement.

There are dynamically formulated tasks, called "dynamic missions" in EU2 which adapt to your current situation. They come from templates with only the details changed - the province you are asked to take for example. They can be switched on and off from the options at game start. I don't remember if they carried this functionality in EU3.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What I valued most in the AGCEEP + MyMap Mod setup was the ultra detailed map and the balance between freedom and historical railroading via scripted events. I think it's the best of both worlds. Current EUIV design philosophy, although ambitious, has many drawbacks. The chief one for me is that too often it feels like I'm playing the same campaign under a different flag, and with other cosmetic changes.

The historical railroading takes me on a ride through the scripted events, which may be the same on per-country basis, but are different for each different country. I can play a campaign with France, then one with England, and I'll get a guaranteed different experience, and learn some general history along the way.

I find this more fun an experience than what essentially EUIV comes down to - timing your actions for maximum profit, and distributing risk between multiple systems for maximum flexibility in case of an unexpected event that puts the systems on strain. It ends up feeling very much like the same campaign, regardless of which country I play as.

 

[ItsChon]

I played EU3 and loved it. How does EU4 compare?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I played EU3 and loved it. How does EU4 compare?

I barely played EU3. At the time the visibly uglier strategy map turned me off, and I stayed with EU2.

 

[Axioms]

I would like to see truly dynamic and changing mission structure based on the game world and situation around you, but of course that would be far to difficult and costly to implement.

There are dynamically formulated tasks, called "dynamic missions" in EU2 which adapt to your current situation. They come from templates with only the details changed - the province you are asked to take for example. They can be switched on and off from the options at game start. I don't remember if they carried this functionality in EU3.

The original EU4 missions were like that. Take these provinces for this reward, convert this province religiously, do this, do that, etc. But they were dull and boring and repetitive and one of them was part of a famous strategy to get The Three Mountains.

The mission trees are very railroaded which is kinda meh but these are history strategy games. They aren't set up to be simulations and they are bad at it. Why would you even start out with a specific and detailed history based starting point if you were going to go off the rails 10 years in? Waste of effort.

In any case that is one reason I don't play Paradox games now. They are more like puzzle games or achievment based roguelikes these days. Most people who play more than a 3 digit number of hours are chasing achievements. How else could you stay interested after 200 hours with shallow games?

 

[None]

I played EU3 and loved it. How does EU4 compare?

It's been so long, but I remember missing a few things from EU3 during the transition to EU4. Sliders were one of them, and the over application of mana ( overly-abstracted game currencies ) can feel a little nonsensical sometimes and takes some time getting used to. I'd have to really go back and refresh my memories on EU3 to say for sure. I will say that EU4 has always been one of the better games of Paradox's current lineups. I mean that in the most literal sense of the term, as there is far more "game" to EU4 than something like CK3, HOI4, etc. Lots and lots of moving parts and lots to do. You've got armies and navies to command as usual, but also estates to manage, province edicts to issue, and other smaller mechanics to stay on top of.

The issue the game runs into is well summarized here:

I find this more fun an experience than what essentially EUIV comes down to - timing your actions for maximum profit

Paradox decided to hire a fat Scot who loved to play the game at a snail's pace and do things like conquer the world with Ryuku as their lead. World conquest can be impressive, but if you've ever attempted or done one before you'll know it isn't any fun. And so that's what the game became. The optimal way to play is to make sure to pause every X years and press all the buttons that are off cooldown for a bonus.

If you liked EU3, you'll probably like EU4. It's got issues but it can be genuine fun if you understand what you're playing isn't (unfortunately) a historical simulation strategy game.

 

[None]

And if you're going to play: do it on ironman mode once you learn the ropes. Difficulty can largely become trivial once you understand how things work, so not being able to save scum and having to live with your choices makes for a better experience. The achievements are also not as memey as other games and give you free goals to pursue during a campaign. To give you an idea here are a few I remember having fun getting:

Spoiler

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Current campaign (until I get bored probably),

Atm gonna focus on converting the rest of my lands to Orthodoxy & gaining innovativeness. After that, eastwards expansion (and later on westwards into Poland & co. for that aesthetic border across the Carpathians).

 

[Heroic Liberator]

...Aand got bored. Might pick it back up later though.

Cheers Commissar Draco))

 

[Forest Dweller]

I played EU3 and loved it. How does EU4 compare?

It's better. Don't listen to the nostalgia fags.

 

[Space Satan]

New trend seem to be Innovative+Espionage+Offensive combo.
It provides so much for so few. Siege ability, diplomats, advisor cost reduction, AE reduction, combat pips etc. etc.

 

[kangaxx]

I've kicked off a USA campaign, starting as England and releasing 17 Colonies. It's a nice relaxing slaughter really once you form the US and get your permanent claims. I wish the missions weren't so threadbare though.

 

[Average Manatee]

New trend seem to be Innovative+Espionage+Offensive combo.
It provides so much for so few. Siege ability, diplomats, advisor cost reduction, AE reduction, combat pips etc. etc.

Espionage is really convenient now. Wouldn't say it's the powergaming pick for maximum expansion rate but it makes things really smooth with all its bonuses + the bonus for 100% spy network. Innovative and Offensive are still trash though.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Coming to GOG later this month...

https://af.gog.com/en/game/europa_universalis_iv?as=1649904300

 

[Fedora Master]

I played EU3 and loved it. How does EU4 compare?

It's better. Don't listen to the nostalgia fags.

It's more bloated with shit

 

[Axioms]

Some guy started Japan and conquered the whole world with no cores or diploannex for One Tag. Paradox players have broken brains. They go too hard.

 

[fantadomat]

Some guy started Japan and conquered the whole world with no cores or diploannex for One Tag. Paradox players have broken brains. They go too hard.

LoL imagine still not having the three mountains achivo,what a loser.

 

[LizardWizard]

Some guy started Japan and conquered the whole world with no cores or diploannex for One Tag. Paradox players have broken brains. They go too hard.

LoL imagine still not having the three mountains achivo,what a loser.

Imagine playing any Paradox game playthrough to achieve that point. You have to be a masochist or a Bulgarian virgin with no life ambition

 

[fantadomat]

Some guy started Japan and conquered the whole world with no cores or diploannex for One Tag. Paradox players have broken brains. They go too hard.

LoL imagine still not having the three mountains achivo,what a loser.

Imagine playing any Paradox game playthrough to achieve that point. You have to be a masochist or a Bulgarian virgin with no life ambition

LoL it will be sad if you actually want to do that,i just found the idea of playing ryukio fun,then conquered asia and by the end the world lol.

 

[thesecret1]

New update for Anbennar dropped. It's pretty fun.

 

[Mikeal]

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 13th of December 2022 - Roadmap to 1.35​

• Thread starter Pavía
• Start date Yesterday at 15:00

Hello and welcome back to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary!

It’s been a while since the last one, back in September. The main reason for this is that the Team has been quite busy during these months. In October we released the 1.34.4 update, that fixed most of the issues we wanted to cover after Lions of the North, and participated in the last edition of the Grandest Lan, which could be organized again at Moszna Castle (and that you can watch at the Paradox Grand Strategy YouTube channel!). In November, the team focused on launching EUIV on a new platform, GOG, with the 1.34.5 update; this is the fourth platform in which the game can be played, after Steam, Microsoft Store, and Epic Games.

So now comes December, and we feel it’s the proper time to give you an insight into what we’re working on and share with you a roadmap to the 1.35 update (as we won’t be releasing more patches for the 1.34 version).

First and foremost, and although we’ve already said this, we want to thank all the players that have bought and played EUIV: Lions of the North, making it one of the most successful releases in the history of this game. We think that a non-trivial part of this has been the quality of the 1.34 ‘Sweden’ free update, and we are very happy about the fact of having to patch it only two times, as we deem this version quite stable.

So, what are our plans for the future? Well, not surprisingly, we want to keep focused on continuing to reduce the bug count as much as possible; in the last couple of years, the Team has fixed between 2,000 and 3,000 backlog bugs, and we think that the state of the game is much better after this effort. However, we still have hundreds of issues in our backlog, so more effort needs to be put into it.

The good news is that now we have some extra room to rework some game mechanics. Don’t expect anything very ambitious, but some more changes that are on the line with the fixes for the AI and the new government reforms we implemented for 1.34, fleshing out features of the game that haven’t received any update in a while. We will cover two of these topics today and next week.

And when is new content going to be shown? We will get started with that in January after the Team comes back from the Christmas Holidays. We’re very excited about it, but you will have to wait a bit more to take the first look at it. And with no further words to say, let's go with the first ideas we want to share with you!

---

Idea Group Additions and Rebalance
Hey everyone, here @PDX Big Boss ! We decided to add a few new idea groups to the game as well as a lot of new policies and new events, to accompany a general rebalance of the existing idea groups.

First things first, we wish to introduce 3 new idea groups:

• Infrastructure Ideas for the Admin Category
• Court Ideas for the Dip Category
• Mercenary Ideas for the Mil Category

A few notes we should mention here! This by no means reflects which will be the released version of the changes. Lions introduced a very high bar of quality and our intention is - at the very least - to meet this bar. So please keep in mind that what you see here is far from finalized, in fact, this is hot code. Having said that, I would genuinely like to encourage you all to give feedback, especially on stuff you don’t like and help shape this beautiful game together. The intention behind these new groups is not to introduce a new powerful single-line meta, but rather to spruce up the game and maybe offer more options for the player, in the interest of making your games more fun and enjoyable. Enough with the boring stuff, onto the Ideas!

The goal behind Infrastructure ideas is to give you the ability to build up your nation, by granting you the tools to speed up construction, reduce its costs, autonomy levels, and more. Let’s take a look:

For the purpose of creating this new group, we chose to separate it from Economic Ideas, which now focus exclusively on the money-making aspect of the game, directly. More on that later, when we tackle existing idea groups.

Infrastructure Ideas offer great bonuses such as construction cost and time reduction, a merchant, autonomy decay, and development cost. Let’s take a look at the Diplomatic Policies for it:

Note: Years for Personal Union Integration: -10

And a quick peek at the Policy Combination of Infrastructure + any Military Idea Group except Aristo/Plutocratic/Horde/Theocratic:

Infrastructure and Aristocratic:

Infrastructure and Plutocratic:

Infrastructure and Horde:

Infrastructure and Divine:

Note: the prestige gain here is 0.5 per Development Point

Moving to the next set of new Ideas, the goal behind Court ideas is to introduce some internal flavor, maneuverability in regards to estate manipulation, and more. Let’s take a look:

We took the decision to make some room for the Prestige here, by moving it over from Religious ideas, more on that later!

Note: an idea we’ve had is to add a unique modifier here ‘max_privilege_slots = 1’ somewhere in this set

Court Ideas + any Admin idea group policy:

Court + any Mil idea group policy:

Note: hmmm this 0.5 Yearly Army Professionalism looks a bit too strong hmm…

Court and Aristocratic:

Court and Plutocratic:

Court and Horde:

Court and Divine:

Finally, let’s look into the new Mercenary Ideas. This one is a bit deeper of a rework because one of our plans is to accompany this new Idea Group with somewhat of a rework on how Mercenaries are distributed, so as to make them a tad bit more interesting at certain points during the game.

Mercenary Ideas + any Admin Group Policies:

Mercenary Ideas + any Dip Group Policies:

Moving on, we have made some tweaks to existing idea groups, let’s look into them:

Religious Ideas

• Removed Stability Cost Modifier and replaced with Religious Unity

Humanist

• Removed Religious Unity and replaced with Max. Tolerance of Heathens and Heretics

Administrative Ideas

• Removed Merc Cost and replaced with Admin Advisor Cost
• Removed Merc Maintenance and replaced with Max Promoted Cultures and Promote Culture Cost
• Removed Interest and replaced with Religious' Stability Cost modifier
• Removed Merc Manpower and replaced with States Governing Cost

Economic Ideas

• Removed Construction Cost and replaced with -25% Monthly Gold Inflation and -25% Gold Depletion Chance reduction (This is a niche change, we would would welcome feedback on this)
• Increased Interest to 1 instead of 0.5 due to 0.5 being removed from Admin Ideas (this will probably get nerfed and the other half will be reintroduced elsewhere)
• Removed Monthly Autonomy and replaced with -25% Reduce Inflation Cost and -33% Autonomy Chance Cool down
• Removed Development Cost and replaced with +10% Goods Produced Modifier

The goal of this rework is to breathe some new life into the Idea Groups that were introduced nearly 10 years ago. On top of that, many existing groups will potentially receive new modifiers such as Humanist’s Heretic Opinion of Us (name TBD) which would increase Heretics’ opinion of your nation, due to your humanist approach towards their people.

Note: most of these Improve Relations Modifiers are Placeholders for relations with own religion/culture group and similar modifiers.

We also aim at revisiting more existing idea groups in the Diplomatic and Military Groups as well as the Events from all idea groups. Furthermore, here’s a little event you may get if your ruler has poor diplomatic skills while Court Ideas are active:

Note: shameful display!

And that’s all for today! We’ll be glad to receive your feedback regarding these changes, as we really wanted to tackle them as early as possible with the community, so we have enough time to change/rebalance the different issues that could arise from discussing them with the community.

Next week there will be another Dev Diary focused on another aspect of the game that we are working on rebalancing: Unit Pips. See you then!

 

[AwesomeButton]

No, first time I hear of it. I found info on some tabletop game that's called this way. There is apparently a thread about it too: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/plvs-vltra.1459132/

 

[Space Satan]

Strolled EUIV forums and noticed that recently Johan is extremely active on topics discussing EUV and what mechanics should it include\exclude. May be nothing but still...

 

[Space Satan]

Either expansion announcement or EUV on 16th of February