Europa Universalis IV

[Sranchammer]

Looks great except for the whole Byzantium thing

 

[Kane]

They should revamp just about everything if we go by that logic. Which is true.

The biggest multiplayer issue ATM are blobbers picking blobbing nations. There's just no stopping them. Peasant wars are a joke and are only bothersome for weak multicultural nations, achieving the complete opposite of what it was supposed to do.

the whole rebel mechanic is that way. i made a glorious post about that a week or so after launch. needlessly to say, the morons on the pdox forums quickly trashed the entire thread. going off on a tangent here but the bottomline is that pdox didn't make blobbing hard, they made going against blobbers hard.

i have charted down some interesting ideas over time, should I ever find the time maybe I'll make a mod out of them. In the meantime we should stick to Europa Gooniversalis.

 

[Kane]

Veritas et fortitudo ?

i have not looked at it yet but the premise seems to be more about SP experience than balanced MP, what with all that extended timeline nonsense.

I think that games with clear victory conditions, such as MotE and Sengoku are ultimately superior for MP play, but alas, the dev time these titles receive are minimal. Also these titles tend to sacrifice too much of the Sandbox in some areas.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Not to mention that carpet siege must now be even more tedious, and I doubt the modder even thought about it (or cares).

 

[Malakal]

Carpet siege is one of the most retarded game mechanics ever and it still exists in the fourth part of the series for unknown reasons. We KNOW that Paradox could easily fix it by allowing armies to reinforce fortifications (like they do in March of the Eagles) and garrisons to sally forth and fight off the enemy, tweaking attrition to unbearable levels if you do not have a connection to a controlled province and allowing armies to take with them only a few weeks worth of supplies for forays deeper into the enemy territory yet carpet sieging remains and is probably the most sure way of winning a war. For a game so focused on war EU series really has shit war mechanics.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Making carpet siege harder and more tedious than it already is would make this game absolutely unplayable. Blobbers would now be invincible, literally.

What this game and it's engine need is a complete revamp. It needs key fortress that blocks your way forward, once sieged, opening up the way for the enemy's capital, and a capital that once sieged usually means the end for your enemy, putting his country in extreme disarray if he refuses peace (unless he specifically has a decentralised country, with all the added negatives). Natural borders should be fairly long and complicated to cross, greatly compromising an enemy army when they cross it, not yours if they're the one standing on it.
Leaders with high manoeuvre could try to bypass all this, in a high risk reward attempt that could end up with the whole army annihilated. And losing Battles should play a huge role in one's defeat, especially if an entire army gets annihilated.
There should be prisoners of war that get released at the end of the war. Also internal politics, and an appropriate AI, would force your hand if you're losing, instead of having stubborn players/ai who waits until 75% of their country has been sieged to send the first peace offer, only really accepting anything until 100% warscore. The current behaviour is something that would only work in the 20th century.
Manpower shouldn't be a magical force that regenerates your army, and losing an entire army doesn't mean it's time to Mercenary stack spam.

None of this would work with the current way the game plays. It would need a revamp. Complete one. It's the 4th iteration, and it's more or less the same shit, except not *entirely* broken at release like the others were.
They will not change their formula the same way Creative assembly won't change theirs. Paradox is one of these medium sized compagnies that has a core fanbase, their ''community'' that will buy any shit they spew, making the majority of their sales. Why should they try something new when the tards who flood their forums will buy Europa Universalis 16 Electric Boogaloo ?

The only hope we can have is that by trying to appeal to a wider audience, they fuck up and revamp the game in a good way by accident. A fool's hope.

 

[Malakal]

No, making carpet siege impossible wouldn't make blobbers invincible because with carpet siege out of the picture they could revamp war score system. Russia lost Crimean War after losing, what amounts in EU, one province. Without carpet siege they could add like 50% ticking war score for target of war provinces. Better yet they could add the ability of annexing a province if enemy refuses a peace and is not controlling it.

 

[Xeon]

I kinda wish if what you can demand in a peace deal wasn't restricted, If you have 100% war score or something you should be able to demand whatever you want and if you demand too much you get punished for it or something.

 

[Malakal]

I kinda wish if what you can demand in a peace deal wasn't restricted, If you have 100% war score or something you should be able to demand whatever you want and if you demand too much you get punished for it or something.

That would be way too easy to exploit. Religious conversion, forced vassalization, transfer of trade power on Muscovy in one war? Cant quite see how they would balance this, not even huge AE penalties would change anything about the fact that one won war with a major means its complete ruin.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

maybe divide the request in groups and can't ask for more than 1 big change for every one.
see, if you want to go past 100% you have to limit yourself to one single group: more regions, more freed vassals *or* more economic concessions. if you want some from more than one group you have to stay under 100%.
not that hard after all.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Better yet they could add the ability of annexing a province if enemy refuses a peace and is not controlling it.

YES. So much this. Of course this would have consequences, such as unlawful territory. But this happened all the time.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I kinda wish if what you can demand in a peace deal wasn't restricted, If you have 100% war score or something you should be able to demand whatever you want and if you demand too much you get punished for it or something.

That would be way too easy to exploit. Religious conversion, forced vassalization, transfer of trade power on Muscovy in one war? Cant quite see how they would balance this, not even huge AE penalties would change anything about the fact that one won war with a major means its complete ruin.

Forced Vassalization would backfire for you anyway.
Some defeats should really cripple you if you acted stubbornly. Just like losing an entire army, which right now isn't much of a big deal if you have money. If you were dumb enough to push your country till it's utterly defeated, which almost never happened in history, consequences should be dire. At this point the royal family is in the attacker's dungeon after all.

There's also the fact that some provinces should really be worth something (not necessarily taxes).
Sweden lost a bunch of provinces on the baltic, yet it meant it's end as a Great Power. The opposite for Russia.
France Spent 3 centuries trying to snatch the Spanish Netherlands, because just capturing this small strip of coastal land owned by them would have meant a lot in the European trade (access to the north sea through some of the richest ports). Hence huge coalitions or extreme butthurt everytime they tried to invade them.

But especially in the case of super blob, acting recklessly and losing really hard should mean the end of your empire most likely. Had Constantinople be taken and the main ottomans army destroyed, the Empire would have fragmented before peace could be made (Mamelukes, Balkans... just declaring independence).
There's no internal realm mechanisms. You just snatch a province and core it. There were nations within nations, even in the most centralised European states. Your realm isn't supposed to be a centralised Dictatorship.

There's also the fact that diplomacy is simplistic, peace is almost one sided, and even in multiplayer, things are just too fast and the chat too much of a clusterfuck to have any reasonable diplomacy going on.
A peace conference mechanism is sorely needed. Non warring nations would also participate. A dynamic war diplomacy between allies as well, each being more or less satisfied with how things are going, pressuring you to make peace, threatening to make their own peace... Provinces that you haven't sieged should also be ripe for the bargaining (It's more costly).
Participating in wars without gaining anything in return should also give you huge diplomatic credibly, eventually giving you an arbiter status in most conflicts, even those you haven't participated in.

I could go on. There's just so much wasted potential.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Carpet siege is one of the most retarded game mechanics ever and it still exists in the fourth part of the series for unknown reasons. We KNOW that Paradox could easily fix it by allowing armies to reinforce fortifications (like they do in March of the Eagles) and garrisons to sally forth and fight off the enemy, tweaking attrition to unbearable levels if you do not have a connection to a controlled province and allowing armies to take with them only a few weeks worth of supplies for forays deeper into the enemy territory yet carpet sieging remains and is probably the most sure way of winning a war. For a game so focused on war EU series really has shit war mechanics.

It's even more retarded in Vic 2 but I won't even start on that.

It needs to have fortress provinces be meaningful and not every single province needs to have a giant fort that requires a chunk of your men to siege. Mechanics for territory should be closer to HoI until you reach a fort province, which then turns into a siege.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Carpet siege is one of the most retarded game mechanics ever and it still exists in the fourth part of the series for unknown reasons. We KNOW that Paradox could easily fix it by allowing armies to reinforce fortifications (like they do in March of the Eagles) and garrisons to sally forth and fight off the enemy, tweaking attrition to unbearable levels if you do not have a connection to a controlled province and allowing armies to take with them only a few weeks worth of supplies for forays deeper into the enemy territory yet carpet sieging remains and is probably the most sure way of winning a war. For a game so focused on war EU series really has shit war mechanics.

It's even more retarded in Vic 2 but I won't even start on that.

It needs to have fortress provinces be meaningful and not every single province needs to have a giant fort that requires a chunk of your men to siege. Mechanics for territory should be closer to HoI until you reach a fort province, which then turns into a siege.

Yea, and chokepoints really need to have more meaning (both Vicky and EU lean too heavily to just drowning the other guy in bodies when facing an equal opponent, and otherwise a curbstomp), and military tech needs to be less of a series of game-changing steps and more of a gentle curve like HoI3 had. Basically just make war more like HoI3, but without the full shebang so no things like supply chains or chains of command.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

 

[Luzur]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

 

[Turisas]

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

That's racis'.

 

[Luzur]

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

That's racis'.

yeah i know, it should totally be like this instead:

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

Oh Sweden does start out with Finnish as an accepted culture. The problem is that if you become a succesful empire you eventually lose the accepted culture due to the diminishing base tax % of your total income (which is how accepted culture is determined in EU4, if a OPM conquers a new culture province it's almost 99% to get a new accepted culture).

 

[Luzur]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

Oh Sweden does start out with Finnish as an accepted culture. The problem is that if you become a succesful empire you eventually lose the accepted culture due to the diminishing base tax % of your total income (which is how accepted culture is determined in EU4, if a OPM conquers a new culture province it's almost 99% to get a new accepted culture).

huh? i prob missed that since i go for the danes/norwegians or Novgorod pretty quickly at start.

well, will this be part of your mod? will that be ready anytime soon? EU has gone kinda....stale now without some nice mods to try out.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

Oh Sweden does start out with Finnish as an accepted culture. The problem is that if you become a succesful empire you eventually lose the accepted culture due to the diminishing base tax % of your total income (which is how accepted culture is determined in EU4, if a OPM conquers a new culture province it's almost 99% to get a new accepted culture).

huh? i prob missed that since i go for the danes/norwegians or Novgorod pretty quickly at start.

well, will this be part of your mod? will that be ready anytime soon? EU has gone kinda....stale now without some nice mods to try out.

This isn't a real mod, just a small set of events you can use with anything that doesn't modify regions.

 

[Luzur]

Also Luzur I whipped up a quick event pair for Sweden in an effort to test how to create workable multicultural empires. The two events convert provinces with primary or accepted culture (if primary culture is Swedish) in Finnish (Turku exempt) and Russian regions into Finnish culture and add (if missing) Finnish as an accepted culture, and a similar event for Estonian culture in Baltic and Lithuanian regions.

The key reasoning is really just that the main problem with multicultural empires has always been that accepted cultures never expand to keep up with the primary culture. So far the events seem to work and should be easy to adapt to any other country which is supposed to have multiple cultures (requests and suggestions welcome), ie Polish could get Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the East, or Irish and Scottish for the English (and vice versa).

yeah i had noticed that Finnish somehow is missing in "Accepted cultures" if you play as Sweden.

Oh Sweden does start out with Finnish as an accepted culture. The problem is that if you become a succesful empire you eventually lose the accepted culture due to the diminishing base tax % of your total income (which is how accepted culture is determined in EU4, if a OPM conquers a new culture province it's almost 99% to get a new accepted culture).

huh? i prob missed that since i go for the danes/norwegians or Novgorod pretty quickly at start.

well, will this be part of your mod? will that be ready anytime soon? EU has gone kinda....stale now without some nice mods to try out.

This isn't a real mod, just a small set of events you can use with anything that doesn't modify regions.

you should make it a real overhaul mod, you know how to tink with EU and you care enough about such small detailed things to make the changes.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

What's the point of colonising Asia and Africa in this game, or establishing protectorates there?
Thread is being steered anyway, since it's mostly one way, except the 2 crossroads, where you can just establish a protectorate and send some light ship.

Also, even for trade focused nations, this is mostly a second or 3rd ressource, even behind production sometimes. You have to blob all over the trade zone anyway, and once you did it, A few lightships will be enough to steer trade from the 3-4 max immediate upstream trade nodes. Afterward it ceases to become cost efficient (especially if you want a battle navy and naval limits is a bitch).

Is there something I missed about the whole Asian, African trade? The colonies are overseas and dont become nations, making them worthless rebel holes.
Steering trade from Asia to Africa to Europa, is this usefull?

 

[Malakal]

What's the point of colonising Asia and Africa in this game, or establishing protectorates there?
Thread is being steered anyway, since it's mostly one way, except the 2 crossroads, where you can just establish a protectorate and send some light ship.

Also, even for trade focused nations, this is mostly a second or 3rd ressource, even behind production sometimes. You have to blob all over the trade zone anyway, and once you did it, A few lightships will be enough to steer trade from the 3-4 max immediate upstream trade nodes. Afterward it ceases to become cost efficient (especially if you want a battle navy and naval limits is a bitch).

Is there something I missed about the whole Asian, African trade? The colonies are overseas and dont become nations, making them worthless rebel holes.
Steering trade from Asia to Africa to Europa, is this usefull?

REAL big money in trade going from Asia to Europe actually and if you protectorate nations there you get 50% their power and they can collect way less. More or less that more money. And since more money = more everything its worth it.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

But what am I supposed to do? Steer trade in each asian nodes toward europe, Hoping it will ed up in my main node?
Or just collect directly with a merchant and the 50% penalty?

I any case, for it to be worth it, you really have to establish a protectorate monopoly over an entire node, and even there it's barely around 10 gold max. For the the troubles of maintaining a big colonial empire, having half you army oversea, beating Other Europeans at the race, the reward seems pretty shit and a net loss compared to american colonies or just blobbing in Europe.

Am I wrong?

Also, how does one deal with having lightships all over the nodes? Seems like a micro nightmare to protect them when war is declared. And Hiding them will result in a huge loss. Not to mention, you will probably lose a big chunk to surprise attacks. Are you supposed to spread them all around, or are they just useful in you main node and the 2 other ones upward?