Europa Universalis IV

[Average Manatee]

Impossible missions are nothing new. EU3 had the infamous "Make Bohemia vote for us to become the HRE", which is of course impossible since they themselves want to be elected HRE so they always vote themselves. At least EU4 has multiple missions to pick from.

I doubt it will be harder than EU3. Everything is far more streamlined and monarch power is far more restrictive, there is simply far less that you can do at once. I forsee high-level play in EU4 revolving a lot around killing your leader over and over till you get a good one and gaming the mission system so the same missions that give monarch power pop up constantly.

A crack is out that will let you play any nation as long as you like (no saving though). And I have to say again: Fuck the focus on monarch power. You want to play a huge empire like Russia or a colonial nation? You can still only have 3-4 generals and admirals, max. And that's combined. 2 generals and 1 admiral across the entire empire is fucking ridiculous, and needing teleport them around the globe to fight different battles is an equally ridiculous thing to be forced to rely on.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I think I like the way tech is done in my very limited play.

 

[pocahaunted]

My trade empire lives on in EU4, love being able to help control centres of trades with light ships. The AI seems to be a bit more passive this time around, didn't even get the filthy mudslims to declare war on my glorious empire.

End game sluggishness is also herem even managed to get a CTD. Wish the crack added save functionality as well.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think it's a very good method of solving the problem. There should be mounting problems for being a huge empire, instead of an endless horn of plenty.

 

[davur]

Soon it will be the time for some monocled colonialism! Gotta git there and tell these fucks to fix my comp.
Except there were no monocles. Fuck, what did people use at the time instead?

 

[Average Manatee]

I think it's a very good method of solving the problem. There should be mounting problems for being a huge empire, instead of an endless horn of plenty.

But it's not even a mounting problem, really. It's just a ridiculous amount of micromanagement (pause, teleport leader around, unpause), and incredibly unrealistic. Problems would come up if you had a limited supply of good generals (like V2, where half are only marginally better than none at all), but were unable to teleport them around, forcing you to lose some battles against small nations who can have their very best general available. But as it is now, you keep hiring and firing generals until you find Napolean, then Napolean, being your only general, gets to go from fighting rebels in italy to subjugating the Aztecs to fighting Chinese all in a week of teleportation if you want.

 

[Renegen]

Impossible missions are nothing new. EU3 had the infamous "Make Bohemia vote for us to become the HRE", which is of course impossible since they themselves want to be elected HRE so they always vote themselves. At least EU4 has multiple missions to pick from.

I doubt it will be harder than EU3. Everything is far more streamlined and monarch power is far more restrictive, there is simply far less that you can do at once. I forsee high-level play in EU4 revolving a lot around killing your leader over and over till you get a good one and gaming the mission system so the same missions that give monarch power pop up constantly.

A crack is out that will let you play any nation as long as you like (no saving though). And I have to say again: Fuck the focus on monarch power. You want to play a huge empire like Russia or a colonial nation? You can still only have 3-4 generals and admirals, max. And that's combined. 2 generals and 1 admiral across the entire empire is fucking ridiculous, and needing teleport them around the globe to fight different battles is an equally ridiculous thing to be forced to rely on.

Monarch power was pretty important in Magna Mundi, it similarly touched everything in the game. It worked really well for larping, after all, a bad monarch was huge in history.
I wonder if that's the idea they stole from the stand alone Magna Mundi.

I don't see too much of a problem with having limiters. The merchant limit will restrict how big your trading empire can be too, maybe the end game won't look as ridiculous as in plain EU3, but I still see the game as highly exploitable. I don't understand the fun in save scumming, killing off your monarch or exploiting the mission system though, some people take map painting too seriously. Mods can't come soon enough.

 

[Average Manatee]

Monarch power would be fine if you could do something to influence it. Say, hire a super-expensive tutor and your heir is guaranteed to have at least 9 stat points total (e.g. 3-3-3 or 5-2-2). Low-tier tutor gives you a minimum of 6 stat points, none at all means no minimum to monarch stats. As it is the only way to ensure you get a half-decent on is gamey things like killing them or getting points through other means. And having a shitty ruler really does suck. Even the game knows that:

Cursed indeed. If this was CK2 I'd be killing this child in an instant, and monarch stats are arguably more important in EU3 than they are in CK2.

 

[tuluse]

They should just implement the family control from Total War games. It's simple, effective, and they could seamlessly integrated with the current systems in place (ie legitimacy).

The only potential downside is that it's a very direct system, and Paradox seems to prefer indirect systems.

 

[Grinolf]

Monarch power would be fine if you could do something to influence it.

I think option to choose adult heir as a regent and a factual ruler for some stability cost would be very nice. Since it what was happened in real life with Juana, when her son Charles V ruled the country in her place. But now if you play Castile in that time, you stuck with crazy ruler for maybe next 50 years.
When heir not a adult, regency counsil would take his place with all downsides of it.

Magna Mundi, where monarches are also very important, had a option to coup incompetent ruler, so mods shoud be able quickly fix it in EU4 too.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Just played the demo as the Ottomans. Kicked the shit out of the Malmuks, converted and cored a bunch of provinces, and peacefully annexed Crimea. Had a lot of fun, love the way tech is done, and I think I like the way the points work right now.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Has anyone figured out whether Aggressive Expansion has any ill effects besides relations and coalitions? One of the other major effects of high infamy in EU3 was that it really hosed your trade.

From what I've seen watching Quill18's gameplay videos it does indeed impact your trade. I think it was "Over-extension" instead of "Aggressive expansion" that he said was penalizing him.

 

[Kaldurenik]

Gave it a try i see some very... annoying issues with some of the new systems. Also zooming is very clunky (atleast for me).

Overall its fun and i cant wait until moders fix the issues that the devs ignored

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Looks like this has potential, but I'm going to have to wait for mods due to the monarch power works. Also, dat Grand Campaign wrong start-up that Paradox still insists is the right story, even through it ins't.

 

[Emily]

I feel that monarch power is kinda semi-realistic, as in history the monarchs really did shape their empire. And in the times of weak ones the empires would crumble.
That said, there are way to offset monarch power by getting high lv advisers so it dosent seem that bad

 

[Sranchammer]

Attrition in Africa needs to be much higher, perhaps by tying certain regions to technology. . It should not be possible for 7k Portuguese troops to sit in Rio de Oro without any attritition while a colony is built.

I feel like a lot of the slowness can be fixed with tweaking the graphics in defines.lua

Nevertheless, I really like what they've done and haven't seen anything that's irreparable yet.

 

[Malakal]

I like how monarch power does not scale to size so big empires are greatly penalized and risk falling behind. In general I love all the decisions you have to make when spending monarch power. My issue however is with gold - there seems to be little ways to spend gold, especially without monarch power.

 

[Renegen]

Tried to play cracked demo with unlimited time, had memory leaks and crashes so I could never go past 30 years. Never change, Paradox.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Tried to play cracked demo with unlimited time, had memory leaks and crashes so I could never go past 30 years. Never change, Paradox.

Ummm... seems silly to blame Paradox for you being unable to play a cracked demo. I haven't had a single problem with it uncracked.

 

[Renegen]

Tried to play cracked demo with unlimited time, had memory leaks and crashes so I could never go past 30 years. Never change, Paradox.

Ummm... seems silly to blame Paradox for you being unable to play a cracked demo. I haven't had a single problem with it uncracked.

Me neither, those problems only showed up after a few hours of playing. Classic Paradox.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Seriously, you're fucking retarded if you blame paradox because you're having trouble playing a cracked version. Will that happen in the full release? Maybe, but stop bitching until it does.

 

[Average Manatee]

Played a new game, this time as Oyo. Took over most of west africa and drove out the muslim filth, got bum-raped by europeans with superior tech. (new) thoughts:

- I agree, Fabricating Claims is ridiculously overpowered. What I didn't realize before was that it both lowers the monarch point cost to take the province in war and lowers the point cost to core, but ALSO REMOVES NATIONALISM ALMOST COMPLETELY HOLY FUCK. As anyone knows from the EU3 patch that nerfed manpower, taking lots of land and then seeing 30k manpower go up in smoke after 10k rebels spawn twice a year is a big risk. Fabricated claims make that almost completely irrelevant and remove possibly the biggest barrier to taking all the land you want. Claims also last too long (you can get 2 claims, start a third -> war, get third claim during war, take 3, then get another 2 after truce is up) and are basically free to make (even if caught, 2 aggressive expansion on it's own will quickly degenerate to nothing, and if it's repeated wars against a single target you probably don't give a shit because they are so weak now). Plus diplomats simply aren't used for much else. You need 1 available to do the instant actions, maybe 1 to raise some relations, everyone else can fabricate their hearts out. So yeah. Needs nerfing.

-I like the trade mechanics, but it seems that it favours large nations far too much. Part of the appeal of trade in EU3 was that it was income relatively independent of nation size, but now the mercantilism effect of owning lots of land seems to give too much trade control. And especially, having a high naval limit to spam light ships seems way too powerful. Not a huge fan of that.

-Ideas definitely don't replace teching hard. At least not in the early game. I wish paradox would lighten the Military Tactics progression a bit, like they did with the latest V2 expansion. As it is Europeans are still ridiculous rape machines that even endless hordes of units can't put a dent in, even with some maxed military ideas behind them. Also supply limits should really have more than a +25% boost in your home territory, yes?

-Westernization seems completely broken. At least, in terms of gameplay (historically of course westernization shouldn't exist at all with the exception of possibly Japan). The new restriction is that one of your core provinces must border a (western) european nation's core province. This is really god damned hard because you have to rely on the AI to core their colonies, which seems really rare since there are some sort of penalties/restrictions to coring distant overseas territory. The other option of course is for me to start attacking Europe with my 7 military tech, which ain't gonna happen. So yeah, not a fan, and I see no reason why the restriction is in place. Also, you can't westernize in any way other than directly to western nations. If you are India you can't upgrade your tech group to muslim, you gotta wait for the Western Europeans to come, take a colony, make it a core, then you westernize completely all in one go.

 

[Malakal]

Well if light ships are still as cheap as they were smaller nations can compete with bigger. Especially when focusing on naval forcelimits.

 

[Average Manatee]

They are cheap, but a nation with 4x as much coastline will have 4x as high a naval limit all else being equal. And a large country can make all light ships and still win naval battles. A small country needs to make a good amount of large ships, otherwise they won't be able to win naval battles. Same with regards to transports, a large nation doesn't need 4x as many transports because there are supply limits in play, so they can again dedicate a greater % of their already greater naval forcelimit to light ships. Overall, naval contribution should actually scale with nation size even stronger than taxation or production, which scale linearly. This is in direct opposition to EU3, where taxation was (almost) constant with nation size, being purely dependent on ideas/tech/advisors.

 

[Sranchammer]

Man, increasing the time it takes to change religion and cores by 5 times Paradox's amount sure does wonders. Also getting caught claiming cores a tad more painful.