Europa Universalis IV

[Mortmal]

Btw, what do you think of new expansion (Art of War)?
.

tbh i see no changes

I see some, while conquest is relatively easier, they certainly gave rebels a boost, had to sell quickly the provinces to my ryazan vassal:

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Why is it that every single updates and changes make the Ottomans even more overpowered? They already made an obscene amount of money with trade, now it's completely outrageous. Taking land back from them is even harder now that the religious ideas have changed.

And Sunni still get this utter bullshit -2 penalty which holds no basis whatsoever.

Then the middle east revamp which makes the idiotically easy expansion over there all the more juicy.

Then the first tech tree nerfs for Westerns. Then another change which makes them even more powerful in early game. Now they are utterly garenteed to snowball. Needless to say, it's simply impossible to resist them, even as far Austria if they expand beyond the balkans.

What is it with them and their massive hard on for this nation?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

well, real ottomans snowballed.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

They were nowhere near being able to do what they can do in-game. They snowballed rather tediously in the Balkan. After Hungary had become a failed state in constant political turmoil and near anarchy.
Even in the 1500s they lagged behind the Western Europeans as far as siege warfare was concerned which is why they failed to take a hastily manned Vienna and never tried to do so or the next century.
They never could properly defend Bassora from the Persian raids, and never could deal with the Persians either. In consequence they were easily outdone by the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, which destroyed their trade income in the long run (something that hardly ever happens in EU4). They certainly lacked the ability to set up proper maritime base anywhere along their deserted ocean coastline.
Yet in game that would be a ridiculously difficult accomplishment and require a dumb AI if you wanted to have a chance of successful halting the Ottomans as the Persians.

What they did however was conquer the entire Mameluke Empire in a single year. They were also a behemoth in the meditteranean which required a coalition of almost every Italian States and the Spanish Mediterranean fleet to take down. They lacked the European's ability to build increasingly large ships, starting from the famous Galleass, which is why they lost in the long run.

When EU4 came out they weren't as unreasonable, aside from that ever idiotic sunni convertion penalty while they were readily converting the entire balkans in 50 years, something they never did in 400 years of reign. They would lose momentum in the 1600s, especially if they were facing a western nation.

Now in the hands of a proper player, it would take every other players in a 10 or so session to metagame and Declare a coalition war against them as early as possible, to stop them. Otherwise they really can snowball and crush anyone faster than the other snowballers, France, Russia and Denmark can.

 

[Sranchammer]

Has Vicky 3 been announced yet

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Seems Finland was removed Vaarna_Aarne

Actually on the subject, they did add Finland a pretty decent idea set:


Traditions
+2.5% Discipline
+10% Global Tax Modifier

1. Expand Viborg: +15% Defensiveness
2. The Hakkapeliitta: +15% Cavalry Power
3. The Fourth Estate: +10% Production Efficiency
4. Settle Middle Finland: -15% Build Cost
5. Found Turun Akatemia: -5% Technology Cost
6. The White Death: +1 Hostile Attrition
7. The Anjala Conspiracy: +10% Land Morale

Ambition
+2% Heretic Missionary Strength

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Relevant screenshot about Finland:

Also, it is, for some reason, orthodox.

Overall though, I'm enjoying The Art of War. Feels like you can do a lot more with not-Europe.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Seems Finland was removed Vaarna_Aarne

Actually on the subject, they did add Finland a pretty decent idea set:


Traditions
+2.5% Discipline
+10% Global Tax Modifier

1. Expand Viborg: +15% Defensiveness
2. The Hakkapeliitta: +15% Cavalry Power
3. The Fourth Estate: +10% Production Efficiency
4. Settle Middle Finland: -15% Build Cost
5. Found Turun Akatemia: -5% Technology Cost
6. The White Death: +1 Hostile Attrition
7. The Anjala Conspiracy: +10% Land Morale

Ambition
+2% Heretic Missionary Strength

It still puzzle me that they nerfed the national discipline bonuses. National traditions are already nearly irrelevant already, the only one that made sense on the long term for a few nations gets the shaft too.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, in a sense it makes sense (lol) to nerf the discipline bonus. After all, any land bonus is far more powerful than any other kind of bonus (with the possible exception of Idea and Stab discounts) due to the importance of land warfare, and Discipline IIRC acts like an additional percentile multiplier (IIRC the formula goes (base*ability)*discipline) for the amount of damage your troops cause to their enemies. Sweden and Prussia used to be far more insane when they had high Discipline bonuses in addition to +20% combat ability bonuses.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Which had the merit of making them play different than other Europeans nations. The only thing separating one western nation form another is the starting position. It's not like there's a lot of different ways to handle your kingdom other than deciding weather you should waste your money earlier on buildings or start blobbing immediately.

Eu3's finances mechanisms had at least this merit.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

 

[Luka-boy]

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Ulmimate power.

 

[CKarpaas]

I see alot about hordes being underpowered and completely useless in EU4 related threads. Then everyone says they practically have to recruit foreign units to survive.
The notion about hordes being underpowered seems kind of strange to me after mostly playing as golden horde/qara qounly. With the right ideas and fast expansion they soon have completely limitless troops and quite decent land modifiers, even after reforming to a sultanate. I have comfortably fought and won against a coalition consisting of almost all european states in around 1660 as golden horde.
Add to the limitless manpower pool full administrative and innovative ideas + hordes no cost for reinforcing and you have unlimited practically free mercenaries too.
Hell, with the new additions of national focuses etc. they cant even fall behind on military tech in any serious fashion. Particularly after paradox equalised tech group troop choices even further in the recent patch.

First post and all too.

 

[Perkel]

I see alot about hordes being underpowered and completely useless in EU4 related threads. Then everyone says they practically have to recruit foreign units to survive.
The notion about hordes being underpowered seems kind of strange to me after mostly playing as golden horde/qara qounly. With the right ideas and fast expansion they soon have completely limitless troops and quite decent land modifiers, even after reforming to a sultanate. I have comfortably fought and won against a coalition consisting of almost all european states in around 1660 as golden horde.
Add to the limitless manpower pool full administrative and innovative ideas + hordes no cost for reinforcing and you have unlimited practically free mercenaries too.
Hell, with the new additions of national focuses etc. they cant even fall behind on military tech in any serious fashion. Particularly after paradox equalised tech group troop choices even further in the recent patch.

First post and all too.

mongols are probably one of the most overhyped things both in real life and in game. In real life they conquered piece of shit mud fields and shitty china and didn't compete with europe when they would surely lost. Same in EU3 Poland usually steamrolls over them

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In case anyone is interested, I've done customization work on the entertaining Shattered Europe alternate scenario. The basis is mostly just that gamestart has EVERY country in existence, which in case of Europe makes a rather colourful map at starting point. I've mostly just done some balance work (mostly in order to produce a certain degree of equal starting footings, first and foremost by slapping down Portugal, Novgorod, Muscovy and Castille a little, removing non-owned cores from Ottomans and Muscovy and some others; and added more colonizer countries while reducing Spain's colonial rush by removing Expansion from their default ideas list; thinking about adding an event that reduces colonists after gaining X colonial states so Spain doesn't show up in Australia AGAIN, and expanded Far East Siberian tribal area a little so nobody can colonize Siberia by sea access), et al. I've also played with the idea of adding more cultural union empires that can be formed. Overall effect is that the average force limit at the start of the game is 10-11 (highest is Austria at 22 due to being HRE) with no one possessing vassals or the like, so it's a full free-for-all. Should take the effort to disable other inheritance events besides just Castille's inheritance event for Aragon.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

wild idea: what if colonial nations added to mainland unrest?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I dunno, that'd be a bit too ridiculous. A scaling set of permanent reductions to colonist quantity and/or colonial range make it better. I should probably also add more events to add liberty desire in the Americas, given how I've seen only a handful of succesful colonial independences (occasionally I see absolutely none at all in a game, and I have never seen a Spanish colony revolt succesfully, or even revolt in the first place), even after Paradox removed the easy way of reducing liberty desire by just using colonial appointments to kiss ass (now only the tariffs event remains).

Besides just the obvious of taking Expansion out of the idea lists for Castille/Spain and Portugal, I've also decided that colonial stuff needs more spice to it, and added a bunch of other nations that join for the free-for-all in Murricas for Shattered Europe.

EDIT: Btw, anyone else feel that saves have started getting corrupted a lot more often recently?

 

[MoLAoS]

If you really want to shatter Europe, remove the HRE. Makes an incredible difference to the game if all their enemies are also dismantled.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Good call. Let's see if the game explodes if I add dismantle_hre = yes into one of the history files...

EDIT: Success!

Anyway, current starting map (well, almost all of it, missing the Kamchadals and other two Far Eastern Siberian countries, but they occupy the rest of the coastline as mentioned earlier):

 

[Norfleet]

Even in the 1500s they lagged behind the Western Europeans as far as siege warfare was concerned which is why they failed to take a hastily manned Vienna and never tried to do so or the next century.

The Ottoman commander pretty much fumbled the entire Vienna business. He slaughtered those who surrendered, thus assuring that the defenders would fight to the death, he tried to siege the city despite having more than enough men to simply take it by Zerg Rush, and then, when aid finally came for the city, he divided his forces. Had he not fumbled all of these points at once, Vienna would have been taken.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I dunno, that'd be a bit too ridiculous.

why? it would represent people getting pissed off at the state diverting its attention (and money) to some distant, unknown land in search for still unclear riches.
still a better reason than overextension mechanics.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The Ottoman commander pretty much fumbled the entire Vienna business.

Not an excuse and has never been. Being able to conjure competent Staff and self correcting mechanisms in the chain of command is part of a nation's war capabilities. The French kept being ridiculed by the Spanish for almost an entire century precisely for that reason.

He slaughtered those who surrendered

Choices and consequences. There was nothing gratuitous in this move. It was either because he couldn't afford to carry them along, due to terrible logistics, or to improve his own troops morale.

he tried to siege the city despite having more than enough men to simply take it by Zerg Rush

Indeed, blindly storming the fortress and trying to win through greater numbers alone would have been his only option. And then suffer considerable losses, being trapped in Vienna and starving with no hopes of reinforcements on his side.

The Ottomans overestimated their capabilities to take a Western fortified city swiftly and with minimal losses. Constantinople defences were severely outdated while Vienna's fortifications were up to date to the latest Italians designs.

when aid finally came for the city, he divided his forces.

What he was capable of assessing from the situation. Being trapped between sallying besieged and relief army is the worse thing that can happen.

Had he not fumbled all of these points at once, Vienna would have been taken.

Had, if, could, would. Easy to rewrite history and an experienced commander's decision. At least the Ottoman didn't seem so confident that it was merely bad luck since they did not attempt a Siege before the next century. And at that point they only did so because they were certain the Emperor was too busy with his other rivals that he wouldn't have the means to deal with them.

why? it would represent people getting pissed off at the state diverting its attention (and money) to some distant, unknown land in search for still unclear riches.
still a better reason than overextension mechanics.

1. From a simulation's perspective it is simplistic, unfair and misplaced. You might as well have your every decisions cause unrest because there will always be parties dissatisfied with each decisions (Why build so much ships, why maintain such a large land army, why construct this building and not this one...). It's also worth mentioning that colonisation brought Portugal and especially Spain massive amount of resources, gold very quickly. Which isn't the case in game.
If anything in the case of Spain and England it in fact reduced unrest, as it was the perfect place to dump undesirables. Many conquistadors were jews and moors, English settlers were religious minorities). Colonization offered plenty of opportunities for the estranged elements of society, especially impoverished nobles and soldiers who would otherwise become trouble makers.

2. From a gameplay perspective you don't need a nerf to colonization at all. No reason to encourage standard circular blobbing even more than is already the case.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Mostly my "colonization nerf" would be aimed towards making for a larger number of players staking their claim and fighting over colonial possessions, but most of all it would prevent fucking Spanish Australia.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Does a Spanish monopoly on colonization every happen to you? In 3 games playing as Spain in Multiplayer I had trouble securing South America and the Carribean before the other ravenous players did, and I still had not reached the extant of Spain colonial Empire by 1650, even thought more than half my budget was going into it.

You might think of the many reasons Spain colonized what it did, and at what pace, and use this as an inspiration for your mod, if you want the map to evolve in a more historically accurate way. Same thing applies to other countries.
Think about France too. Their colonial capabilities were severely limited simply due to the fact that no one would leave the country to man the colonies. Which is why they had less than 100 000 frenchmen in nearly half of North America. I would like to see this factored in game. The reason isn't necessarily unique to France, but the standards of living were such that no one was willing to try their luck elsewhere.