Europa Universalis IV

[Lucumo]

I wish EUIV would roll back to before they overbuilt the monstrous mana systems and mission chains. Maybe sometime around Wealth of Nations and Res Publica.

Watched bits and pieces of Florryworry recently (who seems to have gone off the deep end) and all the mission stuff seems ridiculous aka you get huge amounts of claims and even cores sometimes easily. So blobbing seems way easier than it used to be.

 

[Average Manatee]

Development should have grown naturally with mana being a way of augmenting or directing it.

I wish EUIV would roll back to before they overbuilt the monstrous mana systems and mission chains. Maybe sometime around Wealth of Nations and Res Publica.

Watched bits and pieces of Florryworry recently (who seems to have gone off the deep end) and all the mission stuff seems ridiculous aka you get huge amounts of claims and even cores sometimes easily. So blobbing seems way easier than it used to be.

Claims tend to be mostly irrelevant, it means saving some mana which can let you blob slightly quicker but the main impediment is still winning wars.

The bigger buff mission trees give is permanent modifiers, almost every new tree is littered with them.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Mana's been in the game since release. In fact, on release, even buildings cost you mana (in addition to money). The main decline came when they allowed developing provinces using mana (insanely shit decision, any attempts at simulation go out the window with that one) and when they did the tech group overhaul

I know, I mean when the mana ‘systems’ grew to dominate the game.

Taking away the technology groups is another point of decline I’d forgotten. Westernizing was fun and made sense. Locking the real savages into their abysmal tech groups even more so.

 

[thesecret1]

I know, I mean when the mana ‘systems’ grew to dominate the game.

Seems like that was the moment the game released, tbh. At this point in time, there's 2 mods I'd recommend people to play depending on their preference. MEIOU, which minimizes mana as much as it can and goes the simulationist path with pops and the like, and Anbennar, which takes nu-Paradox design and brings it to its natural conclusion featuring loads of map painting and ridiculously strong missions trees, but accompanied by bucketloads of flavor (so that playing a country is aking to following a story). Paradox clearly fell in love with Anbennar to the point where they copy stuff from them, so that's where the game is gradually moving towards.

 

[Average Manatee]

If you want a more vanilla experience w/o massive ahistoric blobbing then you can also try Voltaire's nightmare, which basically slows the game down by limiting the "world" to the european theatre with far more provinces. So France can't take half of England in a single war. It does run a lot slower than vanilla or Anbennar though, which is odd as its mostly vanilla mechanics so it must have some really inefficient coding somewhere.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Seems like that was the moment the game released, tbh. At this point in time, there's 2 mods I'd recommend people to play depending on their preference. MEIOU, which minimizes mana as much as it can and goes the simulationist path with pops and the like, and Anbennar, which takes nu-Paradox design and brings it to its natural conclusion featuring loads of map painting and ridiculously strong missions trees, but accompanied by bucketloads of flavor (so that playing a country is aking to following a story). Paradox clearly fell in love with Anbennar to the point where they copy stuff from them, so that's where the game is gradually moving towards.

It’s a matter of degrees.

I stopped playing MEIOU with the 2.0 release when tech groups were removed, along with westernization, and they introduced institutions and pops.
Suddenly 90% of the population and economic/development weight of Planet Earth was based in China, India and East Africa, in that order. I’ve probably never been more disappointed with a mod release, though I know you said in the past it was fixed somewhat.

 

[thesecret1]

Seems like that was the moment the game released, tbh. At this point in time, there's 2 mods I'd recommend people to play depending on their preference. MEIOU, which minimizes mana as much as it can and goes the simulationist path with pops and the like, and Anbennar, which takes nu-Paradox design and brings it to its natural conclusion featuring loads of map painting and ridiculously strong missions trees, but accompanied by bucketloads of flavor (so that playing a country is aking to following a story). Paradox clearly fell in love with Anbennar to the point where they copy stuff from them, so that's where the game is gradually moving towards.

It’s a matter of degrees.

I stopped playing MEIOU with 2.0 when tech groups were removed, along with westernization, and they introduced institutions and pops.
Suddenly 90% of the population and economic/development weight of Planet Earth was based in China, India and East Africa, in that order. I’ve probably never been more disappointed with a mod release, though I know you said in the past it was fixed somewhat.

institutions are, in essence, the old tech groups in MEIOU – they reworked the spread mechanic, and getting one as a non-westener was difficult to the point some savage AI was unlikely to achieve it (basically, you had to pass various reforms in your country to allow for such institutions to be adopted, said reforms requiring a high degree of state bureaucracy and control, which take a long time and concentrated effort to raise).

I haven't really noticed much issues with Chinks and co. – wealthy for sure, but inevitably lagging behind in techs to where they're mostly just a tempting target for a prospective colonizer. Haven't played in a long while though – waiting for a major release to give it another spin.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Some years ago I stopped playing EU4, due to it being too easy to blob out of control.

try anbennar mod. only few selected nations can really blob, and when you do, you're struck with absolutely cataclysmic catastrophes, most of whose can take you back to square 0, or further back.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Paradox clearly fell in love with Anbennar to the point where they copy stuff from them

no, that's just common paradox behaviour. they do the same with stellaris, copying mods and selling back their features years later. i don't follow, but i can't see why they shouldn't be doing this with hoi and ck too.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

getting one as a non-westener was difficult to the point some savage AI was unlikely to achieve it

depends. i recall some versions where getting them as westerners had the lowest probability. it must have been around when players were forced to have half their advisors spawn as females. everywhere through the world. totally accurate.

 

[Higher Game]

Don't mess with the peasants.

Would have easily been over 3k devleopment if Commonwealth didn't rival me out of the blue. Should have curried more favors earlier for trust. After that, Germany and Ottomans are easy targets.