Europa Universalis IV

[Average Manatee]

It's funny because spending thousands of mana to form nations is basically the last thing wrong about the game, it's collecting minor buffs after you've already won the game. Axioms probably doesn't actually play the game but does watch the meme streamers he mentions and bases his judgment of the gameplay mechanics around that.

If you wanted to make the game harder and extend the playable timeframe you'd want to actually do stuff like empower coalitions to be formable even without AE against threatening players, make rebels dangerous to majors, make territory hard to integrate, nerf the ability of players to raise relations and get multiple alliances, and so on.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You should be monopolizing nodes and mercantilism is only useful in closely contested nodes.

p. much

Basically the be all and end all of trade (especially important if you don't play in Europe since having pseudo end nodes becomes a necessity):

 

[whydoibother]

You should be monopolizing nodes and mercantilism is only useful in closely contested nodes.

p. much

Basically the be all and end all of trade (especially important if you don't play in Europe since having pseudo end nodes becomes a necessity):

Not watching this bulgarophobe

 

[Lady Error]

I already got bored of my Castile run.

If an easy country is not challenging enough, pick a smaller one. I am having fun with my Holland run, started out as a 3 province vassal.

 

[Stavrophore]

It's funny because spending thousands of mana to form nations is basically the last thing wrong about the game, it's collecting minor buffs after you've already won the game. Axioms probably doesn't actually play the game but does watch the meme streamers he mentions and bases his judgment of the gameplay mechanics around that.

If you wanted to make the game harder and extend the playable timeframe you'd want to actually do stuff like empower coalitions to be formable even without AE against threatening players, make rebels dangerous to majors, make territory hard to integrate, nerf the ability of players to raise relations and get multiple alliances, and so on.

This, and the alliance system doesn't fit the era, where long lasting or formal alliances were rare, and only formed for a specific reason or cause, and were disbanded as the underlying cause was resolved. Long standing alliances should be very rare like portugues-english or franco-ottoman and not breaking easily. As it happens right now in game, you can have 100 trust ally that betrays you or ally your enemy just like that. There's no meaningful interaction to prevent that or concession system, if the ally has grievances or think the alliance is not useful, just like the "breaking the alliance" tooltip mechanics, they could expand on it. There should be less long standing alliances, but more robust, and more short lived alliance that weren't robust or used only for particular reason to gang on someone or prevent its expansion.

 

[Higher Game]

Court/Admin/Religious/Influence, in that order, has got to be the strongest idea set vs the AI. It hits the mana bottleneck the hardest, and for everything else there's debt and more debt.

 

[Average Manatee]

Court/Admin/Religious/Influence, in that order, has got to be the strongest idea set vs the AI. It hits the mana bottleneck the hardest, and for everything else there's debt and more debt.

Why Court? Just for 5% CCR with admin? It looks to be pretty trash otherwise.

Diplo/Admin still king of starts IMO. AE recovery and more alliances/vassals = cruise control for easy blobbing. Though I did notice that they nerfed Vassals, now the AE benefit of vassalization though war over conquest is practical nil.

 

[Higher Game]

Court/Admin/Religious/Influence, in that order, has got to be the strongest idea set vs the AI. It hits the mana bottleneck the hardest, and for everything else there's debt and more debt.

Why Court? Just for 5% CCR with admin? It looks to be pretty trash otherwise.

Diplo/Admin still king of starts IMO. AE recovery and more alliances/vassals = cruise control for easy blobbing.

Court gets you government reforms faster, which does all kinds of nice things, including more CCR and admin efficiency. And it usually helps power projection at a key moment, when you're too big for easy OPM rival wars but not big enough to get the great power bonus, when you're in that middle power uncanny valley. And +1 max privileges is just plain awesome.

 

[janior]

I haven't played since after Emperor, and it is amazing how easy this game has become. Not to say it wasn't all that difficult back then either.

I already got bored of my Castile run. PU over Portugal, Aragon, Austria and France. Alliance with England and Bohemia. Gatekeeping everyone else from the Americas and Africa.
Ottomans doubled their development by vassalizing the Pontic-Caspian steppe and Persia region as vilayets or whatever meme words was chosen for their special mechanic, but they can't handle my swarm in a war, even if they are stronger in individual battles. And their navy is half of mine. Don't think I'll be continuing. The moment that coalition didn't fire, is the moment I "won the game".

that happens in every single player eu4 campaign

 

[whydoibother]

Since we are talking broad genre stuff, thoughts on Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim

 

[Axioms]

Way too short/simple/casual imo. That doesn't make it bad, but it is barely comparable to regular strategy.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Since we are talking broad genre stuff

 

[Joggerino]

Since we are talking broad genre stuff, thoughts on Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim

As Axioms said, short and a bit casual. Still fun imo. Your strategy seems to mostly rely on what kind of terrain you want to prioritize researching. Has nothing in common with eu4.

 

[Theodora]

Hell, it looks like it has more in common with say Catan than EU4. But yeah, it's weird when people place turn-based 4X games alongside PDX titles. I suppose Total War games to some degree bridge the divide between them, but that's still quite a stretch.

 

[Lady Error]

EVEN MORE GLORIOUS DUTCH EMPIRE​

After defeating the Ottomans, France and then Austria once each I feel like I am done with my Holland playthrough (it is 1760). This time I had not just the largest navy, but after about 200 years also the largest army. Could have become an economic, naval or military hegemon - picked the latter in the end due to better bonuses.

The biggest difference for a large army was making more states out of high dev provinces, using the "centralization effort" state decree and then the "manpower" state decree, as well as building tons of State Houses and Courthouses. In the end I had only 800 governing capacity used out of 2400, despite lots of states.

Getting Great Britain makes the most sense for Holland due to sharing the same trade node and Britain not being in the HRE. I invaded England early on with Denmark and then later took over his part of Britain and then Denmark itself as well.

Austria was very strong this time and inherited Aragon. France also strong as usual and inherited Portugal later. The HRE fell apart after the Protestants won while Austria stayed Catholic, meaning the new Emperors were very weak. The only survivors of the HRE hunger games were Bavaria and Magdeburg.

I made sure to contain the Ottoman as much as possible by allying with Commonwealth, Austria (for a while) and Timurids on his easteern flank. Russia was later gobbled up by everyone and I took my pieces both in the far east and in Europe. Here Russia is currently being invaded by Timurids and Liang:

It does not look like Holland owns very much and yet it is the biggest empire:

Money really picked up once I got not just to the East Indies, but also a few provinces in Taiwan and Japan. Then after around 1600 I had more money than I could spend:

Should have picked administrative and diplomatic ideas earlier though:

Picked a Random New World because it more interesting and adds something new. It spawned only 4 colonial areas (instead of 12):

This is what effective home defense next to two rival superpowers looks like:

Apparently I like this game more than I thought.

wwsd might enjoy this one.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

and for everything else there's debt and more debt.

Bro you can't just solve all your problems by pilling debt upon debt,
This is an early modern age simulation, not a 2023 simulation.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

View attachment 35544

u gonna die

 

[janior]

disgusting border gore

 

[whydoibother]

View attachment 35544

u gonna die

They never attacked, one by one started dropping out of the coalition.

 

[Axioms]

So I'm a certified Brentrer now. But what is weird is that when I used the decision to form the Italian crown it not only took my direct Italian provinces but it took all the provinces from Spain and Naples, essentially inheriting Naples automagically, and put them under Italy. I don't think it is supposed to take PU provinces and add them to Italy but I'm not a big brain developer like the ones at Paradox.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Did they nerf the willingness of nations to declare independence in some recent patch? Was literally guaranteeing the independence of 11 different nations - most of Portugal's and about half of Spain's. 20 years passed and nothing happened.

 

[Riddler]

Did they nerf the willingness of nations to declare independence in some recent patch? Was literally guaranteeing the independence of 11 different nations - most of Portugal's and about half of Spain's. 20 years passed and nothing happened.

No idea but I've noticed the same thing.

 

[Frozen]

They should eliminate rebels alltogether in late stages of a game. Add some mechanic that either slows them down and makes them a real threat when triggered for disintegration of your country or something.

If I had a super world war where I killed like million of enemy troops and pillaged all territory, there should be no way a 60k+ stack of rebels of that nation could emerge within a year.

And later in game when you have million od troops this means nothing its just annoying micromanaging and tedious and stupid. It doesn't hurt you at all its just busy work.

 

[Theodora]

If I had a super world war where I killed like million of enemy troops and pillaged all territory, there should be no way a 60k+ stack of rebels of that nation could emerge within a year.

What's the logic that rebellions shouldn't be a thing late game or after wars? If anything that's ahistorical.

 

[Frozen]

Both. It's stupid and annoying trigger tied to game mechanics. You know it will happen just because its pre-built and you can't stop it.

Rebelion later in game to be realistic should be tied to something logical and have a true serious impact. It's so fucking annoying and has no purpose later on.

I'm earning 1000+k have more than 1 million troops, own half the world and in some desolate place bunch of rebels would spawn to achieve what? Why? Get killed and waste my time.

You go for rebellion if you believe you have a chance or you were oppressed in some way. If you just lost your country and are conquered after most of your male population was wiped out by a conquering army, you would not rebel.

Rebellion being a professional army in a province is stupid as fuck in late game because no rebellion could have like artillery or tanks. They should be just modifier you could get rid of by other means.