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 First released in 2013, Europa Universalis IV is newest iteration of Paradox Interactive's acclaimed grand strategy series. Running from 1444 to 1820, the game spans the globe in intricate detail, allowing you to take the reins as one of over 400 possible historical nations and set them up for greatness through diplomacy, colonization, and (most of all) conquest, over the course of this dynamic period of history. Every country on the map is playable, and the possibilities range from giants like the Kingdom of France and the Ming Dynasty of China, all the way down to tiny German city-states nestled away in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, embattled Japanese daimyo, or even native tribes in Alaska.  While some regions (especially those with dedicated DLCs) have more to them than others, nearly every nation in the game boasts at least its own unique national ideas, a set of bonuses modeled after its history that affect how they play. This, plus the unique political situation in any given region, a robust and dynamic AI taking control of every non-human nation, countless events, a whole slew of unique mechanics, as well as regular content updates, means the game can feel very different with each new playthrough even after hundreds (or often, thousands) of hours. This game isn't for everybody, and it can take a lot of time to get past the initial learning curve. But if you get over that hurdle, there's really nothing else that compares.  Taking the role of a nation within this era of history it is your goal to remain independent and work your way towards becoming a global superpower. Like in past EU games you have control over your military with which you can use to fight your enemies on land and sea or, if force does not work, you might use your diplomatic clout to organise grand coalitions or attempt to vassalise weaker neighbours through peaceful means. You might also want to try to achieve trade hegemony by using your merchants and navy to make your empire rich off the backs of others. Even then if the Old World does not appeal to you then you can organise explorers and conquistadors to head out into the Terra Incognita to find new lands for which you can send your colonists into with the larger and more powerful colonies eventually become nations within themselves with the potential to declare revolution and independence from the mother country.   It's important to note that EUIV is not turnbased (although you may change the speed with which time passes). The strategy mostly comes not from commanding the battles themselves but from army composition, the use of good commanders and an eye for the right terrain to fight on. For instance, fighting defensively on a mountain will greatly increase the amount of casualties your enemy will take and allows smaller armies to beat much larger ones often, especially with the right general. It is not just a matter of winning battles however as you will also need to occupy enemy provinces or blockade their ports to be able to enforce complete victories over opponents. You will need to know both when it's the right time to start a war and also when you should end it, as a prolonged conflict will often see you hurting at home as your war exhaustion increases and your population grows restless. At this point Paradox games are probably established enough that this part goes without saying, but just in case, it's important to note that this isn't Total War, if you're coming into it expecting a spectacle. Paradox games like Europa Universalis ascended out of their groghole some years ago now, but at the end of the day it's still lots of looking at numbers, interfaces, and maps. Battles are pretty much the height of what you'll get, and they look like this:  Thrilling, right? Well if those are your last few thousand men and you're hoping desperately for them to hold the line until your ally's reinforcements arrive, it might be, but clearly not so much in a visual sense. Think more like a board game this whole series of games was actually based off one and there won't be any surprises.  At this point EU4 has had so many updates that you could have played it on launch and be nearly as lost as someone that hasn't played since EU3. I'm not gonna delve into everything here, although there's a very thorough page on the EU4 wiki if you're interested, but here's an overview of what I think are the most important major free changes: From EU4's launch
These are just the very most notable changes though, there's really so much more. Thousands of new provinces, more than a hundred new nations, countless events, AI improvements, interface updates, modding support. The game has been built upon over and over, almost to a fault, even, and that's not even getting into the DLC. At this point I expect most people who had EU3 and are interested in 4 have already got it, but just in case, here's the list of major changes, courtesy of the old thread. From EU3:
 Well here's the thing with Paradox games. On the one hand you get constant support and free updates for years, on the other hand, you get this:  No price reductions, and even the sales feel like they're getting a bit stingier. Fret not though! You really, really, do not need to get everything. Not even close; there's two or three expansions that we tend to classify as "necessary", but even without those the game's still extremely playable. The devs make an active effort to balance features so they don't require DLC (although some would say to mixed effect, with one glaring issue especially), and if you ever do want to try out expansion features, multiplayer games enable DLC content based on what the host has, so you can hop in a goon game (more on that below) to try it all out. All that said, if you do want to get some DLC, here's a breakdown, with the most important at the top. There's a long page on the wiki as usual, with links so you can see full feature breakdowns if you're into that. Most every expansion has regional focus of some kind, as well as some more general features, so it's worth looking at some that you think might not interest you based on their main billing if they have some important features. Also, wait for a sale. Check out the wiki page for a more complete breakdown: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content (in sort-of-subjective descending order of importance) The Necessary these are the most important ones, get these first  Common Sense This is a decent expansion by its self, but it's "necessary" because of one feature - development, the ability to click a button on your provinces and make it better. Actually, that feature by its self is generally mediocre normally you want to expand through conquest instead. But combined with the institution system, it means you can spawn in institutions at will rather than having to rely on their natural spread. This is absolutely game-changing in the non-European world, since it means you never have to be behind on tech again. It also comes with some flavor for England, Protestants, and Buddhists.  Art of War This one is commonly touted as the best expansion in the game, but a big part of that is the patch it came alongside (which added nearly a thousand provinces to the map), which doesn't matter so much when you're buying it three years later. Still though, it lets you transfer occupation of provinces to war allies and vassals (which makes expanding a heck of a lot less messy), lets you declare wars because of subject claims, make armies out of templates, and also a major mechanic for the Thirty Years War, which can add a lot when you're playing in Europe. Lots of minor quality of life stuff basically, but it adds up to a lot, and when you're looking at tutorials and asking for help, a lot of people will assume you already have this one. The Not Necessary But Major these have features that touch many parts of the game, and you'll get a lot out of them no matter where you play  Rights of Man My pick, this adds traits to your rulers and generals, as well as queens. Lots of flavor for your court life, basically. Also great powers, a system to let you bully your weaker neighbors or fling yourself into a major war you'd otherwise have no business in. Also mechanics for African religions as well as a government for the Ottomans.  The Cossacks  update: as of the Dharma expansion, these are being added to the base game!) More importantly, a totally different alliance system, based on a system of trust and favors. Basically meaning you can't call in your giant ally to fight all your wars for you without giving them something in return, it makes the diplomatic game a lot more engaging. Also adds mechanics for Eurasian Nomads, and because of estates being moved to the base game, as of Dharma, several unique estate types and a Cossack government are being added in their place. Cradle of Civilization This one focuses on the Middle East, giving the region a bevy of unique government types (especially for the Mamluks and Persia) as well as new unique mechanics for Islam, in the form of "Islamic Schools" that subdivide it into various sects, adding some unique flavor and extra depth between the schools for intra-Islamic interactions. In addition to that, there's also army professionalism (not to be confused with army tradition, another game mechanic which naturally remains completely unrelated), a system that has you balance short term payoff with long term benefits for your military, as well as army drilling, which for a steep cost lets you eek a little bit more out of the quality of your troops temporarily, although most people don't consider it worthwhile to do.  Mandate of Heaven This one's pretty controversial. The base of it is fairly solid (although there's nothing totally necessary), but it also adds one feature that sorta breaks the game when you're on the periphery of China. Except, turns out the periphery of China is more like India, Persia, and Kazakhstan, rather than Korea and Vietnam like you'd think. Still though there are a lot of new mechanics and flavor for East Asia, both for religions and governments. I contend it makes playing there (when you can work within China's system rather than having to brush up against it) massively more engaging, but some people disagree. Unrelated to Asia though, it also includes the diplomatic macrobuilder, one of the best additions to the game in a long time, as well as the ages system that can give you a series of short-term goals and bonuses. Regional / Specialized these tend to have a more specialized focus, so they're not so necessary unless you wanna play one particular government style/ culture/ religion etc  El Dorado This is gonna be essential for a certain kind of player, and almost never touched for others. Its big feature is the nation designer, which does what you'd expect; create a country however strong or weak, big or small, whatever culture, ideas, with whatever king or queen. Other than that though, it also has mechanics for Mesoamerica and the nations of the Andes, as well as a nifty auto-explore feature for Europeans in the Americas that has some flavor and stuff. Mostly this expansion is about the nation designer though, so decide as you will based on that.  Wealth of Nations Are you an outward looking, virile European nation, with an interest in exploiting Asia? This is the expansion for you, since it comes with trade companies, which are basically just bonuses for extra-continental provinces. Honestly it's a bit boring, now I think about it, they don't really act on their own or anything. It also has privateers, allowing you to get money out of trade zones you can't otherwise access, as well as mechanics for the Hindu and Reformed religions. Oh yeah, most importantly, Trade capitals allow you to choose where your home-trade port is without having to move your capital, meaning you can get the most out of EU4's linear trading system no matter how unfortunate your home-node happens to be.  Mare Nostrum This one got mocked for a while because it came in the patch alongside sailors and corruption, but it has naval missions which takes a lot of the tedium out of naval combat, trade leagues allowing minor cities to band together for mutual defense, and Condottieri, the ability to loan out a stack of your dudes to another nation's war. Or hire them for an extra punch. Personally I don't find the AI makes enough use of it for it to be interesting, but I hear if I stopped wussing out and playing on normal difficulty then it might be a major feature. Also some stuff for Barbary Nations, including the ability to shove a popup into every Mediterranean nations' face every other year.  Conquest of Paradise A special set of mechanics for Native Americans, but unfortunately gameplay there has been in a sorry state for a while so I wouldn't recommend it for that unless you're really invested. Also random new world, which is a kinda neat feature that lets you randomize... the new world. So you never know what you're gonna find when you sail across the Atlantic, and can't just beeline straight for the best parts.  Third Rome This is a flavor pack that adds extra stuff for Russia that makes it horrendously overpowered, as well as a mechanic for Orthodox Christianity. If you wanna play Russia, this is nice to have, otherwise there's not much to it. Worth noting that it comes with the unit and advisor graphics bundled in (normally they're sold in a separate DLC), which is why it might seem a bit expensive for what there is.  Res Publica Factions for Merchant Republics, as well as a unique government type for the Dutch. There's not much to this one, but it is pretty cheap to be fair. This also had a vital feature in the form of national focus, which lets you make up for a deficient monarch by specializing your monarch points, but that got bundled in with the Common Sense DLC later on so I'd pick it up there instead.  Rule Britannia Similar to Third Rome, this is a flavor pack for the British Isles, adding a bunch of extra missions as well as an Anglican religions. Technically it adds a couple of global mechanics too, but they're so non-impactful that they're really not even worth mentioning. If you want to play in the British Isles, this is an okay pack, if not, it's probably not. Worth noting, like the Russian pack, this one also comes bundled in with unique unit models, although no advisor portraits this time. The Unknown  Dharma Unique mechanics for India, with unique governments, missions, estates, and more, as well as a mechanic for non-Indian nations to get a foothold on the subcontinent. More globally, there's also new mechanics for customizing your government as well as revamped policies. It's not out yet, so we'll have to see how it turns out, but from the dev diaries it's looking promising. Content Packs & Minor DLC DLC for EU4 can be divided into two... and a half categories. There's the major expansions (listed above), and for each of those, a corresponding Content Pack, which, despite the name, are purely aesthetic / music packs, and come with no additional gameplay stuff. The value of these is really personal preference depending on whether you're the type that actually cares about that stuff. Personally I really like the additional visual flair they add, but if you're the kind of player who never zooms in then obviously it's gonna be of lesser value to you. Now I said "two and a half categories" because they only started making the content packs to bundle all the extra stuff together after a year or so of DLC, so the earlier stuff is a lot messier. That said, it's generally pretty self explanatory. If it says unit pack it's got units, if it says advisor portraits it's advisors, if it says music it's music, and so on. The exception to this is the stuff that was released right around the game's launch, all of which has been bundled in the Early Upgrade Pack. It's a mix of unit models and minor content for a few nations, most of which isn't terribly important.  Paradox games are notoriously hard to get into, and with 4 years of content teetering on top of it, EU4 is definitely no exception. It took me about 20 hours of gameplay before I could make heads or tales of anything, and 1300 hours later I'm still learning new things every now and then. I haven't tried it in a long time, but from what I hear the in-game tutorial is pretty lacking. So my advice, is just play! Ask away in the thread if you have any questions, and I'd recommend for your first game remembering the console key ` and the cash command in case anything goes too wrong as you get a handle on the interface. There is a lot of information on your screen, but at the end of the day you can get by without knowing what half of it means. That said, a few things you really should pay attention to: Aggressive expansion For every province you take, other nations will notice. How much they'll care will depend on a lot of factors I won't get into here, but there are times when you can eat a whole nation in one gulp, and other times when more than a couple of provinces will get half of Europe breathing down your neck and forming a coalition to attack you together. You can figure out which one it'll be based on a number visible in your peace deal:  Not good, right? So pay attention to that. Overextension So you just managed to take a bunch of land from your enemy, and avoided getting torn apart again by a coalition. Good job! Unfortunately, rebels seem to be popping up constantly for some reason?  Every province you take adds to your overextension (more valuable ones more than less valuable). It gets more painful the higher you go, but the big threshhold is at 100. You don't wanna go over 100 overextension, it doubles how fast your rebels will progress and ushers in a whole bunch of bad events. Even under 100 overextension things can be difficult, but more than that can be nation-ruining unless you're extremely prepared for it. Truces Don't trucebreak. There's a helpful warning when you declare war if you have a truce with someone still. Pay attention to it.  In general, look at your interface. Hover over numbers, because nearly everything is explained in tooltips, and nearly everything is warned against. If it isn't (or even if it is, but you didn't notice, or want a better explanation), feel free to ask in the thread, and I'm sure lots of people will be willing to help. Also, use the wiki! It has in-depth articles on almost every facet of the game. Here's also some video tutorial serieses by some very good players: An official Paradox one One by a youtuber  Paradox games are very moddable and there are a lot of mods that change the game, in ways big and small. Check out the Steam workshop and browse for yourself if there's something that appeals. It's worth mentioning, a number of posters in the thread have a lot of experience modding, so like for game tips, feel free to ask if there's a number you're trying to figure out how to tweak, or if you want to change a country's starting monarch or something. For bigger questions you might want to check out the official modding forums (you need to be signed in to access them), and the EU4 wiki has a number of articles too.  Multiplayer's been a big focus for the development of EU4, with its balance taking an important role, as well as improvements to stability and all that. They're finally fixing hotjoining for the next patch, even! There's a very active Goon discord group that plays regularly, check out the thread. You can also find games on the Paradox multiplayer forum    Useful Links Koramei fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2017 08:51
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reserved there are a few more things i wanna add but i'll do it tomorrow. also point out poo poo i missed and so on etc
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Nov 16, 2017 08:51
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No way is there gonna be a V before 2020; earlier this year during Paradoxcon, Johan (the lead) said he wasn't even sure how they'd go about it, so that's basically as much confirmation as you can get that they're not working on it yet. Groogy posted:second edit: also why is it so quiet, is everything okay with the patch and expansion? no, installing it set my computer on fire and murdered my family OwlFancier posted:I don't play this game but that is an A+ thread title. I can't take credit for it, I just stole it from the last thread 
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Nov 16, 2017 18:28
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the one with Cknoor and DDRjake is pretty okay iirc, I watched a couple of episodes of it as it was coming out. It's the other one I linked in the OP.vyelkin posted:I must have missed this, how exactly does Common Sense let you get institutions at will? When you develop a province, it gives you a chunk of whatever the first institution you don't have is. If you develop low dev provinces it's like +.001 so you'll probably not notice, but it adds up when the province is wealthier. Normally developing a ~15 dev province to start with is what people do. It takes something like... 2000 monarch points to seed the institution. Maybe less if you stack development discounts. sudo rm -rf posted:does zoroastrianism still exist somewhere in the new patch Still in Yazd. Maybe it got converted quickly in your game. Jay Rust posted:How do I find out when an army will arrive at its destination a few provinces away? Before, you could mouse over the tiny arrow towards the top of the unit info screen, but it looks like they removed that tooltip. Where did it go? This has gotta be a bug, the green arrow is still on the interface and everything but it uses the tooltip for stuff that's next to it. edit: I just went to the Paradox forums to report it but someone beat me to it, but they also showed you can still get the tooltip by hovering over the very top of the arrow:  kind of annoying but at least it's something until they fix it Koramei fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Nov 17, 2017 |
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Nov 17, 2017 02:13
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drat, it's that bad? I saw people recommending Arumba's tutorial stuff before, maybe one of his earlier serieses is better? Anyone here learned by watching them?AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Any Ming tributary news? nope I'm liking army professionalism, even if it would be better if it wasn't totally detached from army tradition. Taken as its own mechanic though, it's a really welcome change to have some incentive to not always 1. lower maintenance and 2. use assloads of mercenaries in every single game.
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Nov 17, 2017 05:02
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Sheep posted:I'm unsure if the AI actually has to deal with fog of war (gut feeling is no) They're supposed to act like they have to, even though since it's an AI they can obviously know everything at all times. There could have been other reasons for them rushing the Caucasus, like trying to get back past your main army on the front lines and annoy your rear or something, without realizing there was an army back there at all Or it coulda been bugged out and they did see it, I dunno.
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Nov 17, 2017 21:50
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I had the same thing, the Ottomans just sat a third of their army off in the desert for a couple of years when I was at war with them. Totally saved my rear end too, they were pummeling me into the ground until that. It did totally used to happen before this patch too though. No clue if it's more frequent now or what. Unrelatedly, stealth addition of that army quality page on the ledger is a godsend.
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Nov 18, 2017 23:03
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You already can, through barracks and mercenaries. I don't see what soft state caps would add other than nullifying the whole point of the system once you got past a certain income level.
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Nov 19, 2017 19:18
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Fister Roboto posted:It's not nullifying the whole point though. It's being able to make a tradeoff, which is kind of the whole thing strategy games are about. Like you could just as easily say that mercenaries "nullify" the whole point of manpower (they don't). Mercenaries don't nullify manpower at all, they're very clearly worse but useful as a stop-gap so that all gameplay doesn't just come to a screeching halt when your manpower runs out. Letting you go over the state cap though would mean every large rich nation (i.e. the nations that state caps were put in place for in the first place) would just go over it, because trading between money (easy to get at that size) and manpower (harder to get) is a no-brainer. Unless you made going over the state cap so punishingly expensive that it would be a pointless addition in the first place.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:02
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I really wish they'd at least change it to only be one of those province-culture modifiers that got added in Mandate of Heaven, so you could still have expensive cores on your actual poo poo but not just spread it around like the plague.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:05
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SkySteak posted:I was gifted Cradle of Civilization by a friend recently and with the current sale going on, I decided to check out the DLC I missed out on (I had every major expansion up to Art of War). Really though, I understand there is a listing in the OP for the various DLC but I am wondering, as a whole has it really improved the game that much? The issues of potential DLC mills aside, has it actually resulted in the game been improved or has it just made a mess of things? I remember a couple of years back, that EUIV had quite a positive outlook put upon it but now it seems like constant complaints of bugs and imbalance, brought about by expansions and then fixed in later expansions where new issues are created. Would it be better to hold out for EUV or w/e at this point? It's just after a DLC launch so bugs/ imbalance complaints are gonna be a big thing right now; the only super-recurring buggy thing most of the time is fort zone of control, and that's normally because its mechanics are really obtuse rather than it actually being buggy. Otherwise though, the DLC (and patches, for that matter- a few of the more hated features like sailors and corruption are free) has basically done both things you said, although "made a mess of things" is maybe a bit strong. The game is a lot better than it was 3 years ago, there are some very significant really good free additions (forts, institutions, states and territories) and a ton has been streamlined and polished, the AI is a lot better, and most of the DLC features are pretty fun. But there is also a shitload of extraneous poo poo that could be better integrated. You can probably figure out what you'll think by playing what you have now, without getting more DLC. In a lot of ways it probably would be better to hold out for EUV though yeah, but you're gonna be waiting a while. Fister Roboto posted:One thing I really want them to change is the battle formation algorithms. As it is, there's no way to take advantage of having lots of cavalry without stupid fiddly micromanagement. Let's say you're attacking an army that has a width of 10, and your army has 10 infantry and 10 cavalry. What will happen is that your 10 infantry will line up in front of the enemy's line, four of your cavalry regiments will go on the flanks, and the other six cavalry regiments will do literally nothing. To make matters worse, if you have a 50% inf/cav ration, you'll instantly get the tactics penalty when your infantry take damage. If you actually want your army to fight effectively, you need to split your infantry and cavalry and make sure the cavalry arrive a day before the infantry. It's really dumb and it makes cavalry bonuses a lot less useful than they should be. I dunno, there are lots of situations you'd not want this I think. Cavalry are more expensive to reinforce and they take more damage for most of the game/ most tech groups, so you'd end up with a line of cavalry that got eviscerated after every artillery-heavy battle and now all your stacks cost a ton more to reinforce. Cavalry being on the flanks works to their strengths, and rearranging the army composition to account for the size of the stack you're fighting / the combat width etc is one of the only parts of the more tactical side of the combat in this game that actually has any depth. Also you're not supposed to have 50/50 inf/cav if you have a 50% ratio, give it some padding to account for losses.
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Nov 22, 2017 02:37
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whoah what, does their flag actually change?
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Nov 22, 2017 02:51
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Can't you just bring less infantry?
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Nov 22, 2017 03:30
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Just how much cavalry are you wanting to bring? The combat width at the start of the game is 20 and it ramps up fairly quickly, you can easily fit like 8-10 regiments of cavalry by the time most nations can afford it without having to sweat the tactics penalty. I go heavy on cav and pretty much the only times I ever get the tactics penalty is when I've run out of manpower to replace my infantry losses. I'm not saying army deployment couldn't be improved (maybe it'd be cool if it did more like what you're suggesting depending on the general, or if you're a horde or something) but I'm not sure this is the issue you seem to be making it out to be. Koramei fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Nov 22, 2017 |
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Nov 22, 2017 05:02
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Hordes (and maybe like, Poland) are the edge case where I could see it being genuinely useful, but most of the time I would rather have my cavalry on the flanks.
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Nov 22, 2017 06:37
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EU4 combat is cool & good
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Nov 22, 2017 06:56
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canepazzo posted:I don't really get Mamluk's succession - I can choose one of three dynasties/cultures for my heir, with the third one being "oh he's an outsider from Circassia" with a strong claim (100 legitimacy), a +15 increase to military tradition, and (so far in this game), never worse than a 4-4-4. Why would I pick the other two? It locks out 2 of the government actions right? Since you need to have ruler-cultured land to use them.
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Nov 22, 2017 07:14
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skasion posted:Mamluks existing forever and being consistently at least equal in power to Ottomans throughout the game may just be the silliest thing that has been added to EU4, even sillier than the indestructible Ming god-empire. All I've learned about them has come from an episode of In Our Time, but according the historians on that, the Mamluks getting wiped out was really not an inevitability at all. It makes a lot of sense for a Middle East expansion so we actually get to see the mechanics for the new nations for a while, and I do like how varied everything is there now, but I think I will miss mega-Ottomans. It's nice to have a genuine end boss in Europe.
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Nov 23, 2017 18:44
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Just post, there's a ton of bullshit there anyway so I don't think you need to worry about that. I don't speak for the devs but I don't think it's only map/flavor stuff that gets taken on, it's just that stuff that's the most obvious when it gets used. I doubt they'd be using on a gameplay mechanics suggestion 1:1 as it was submitted in the same way they might for something with incontrovertible historical sources (not that half the history suggestions have that either I suppose) but that doesn't mean it can't make an impact.
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Nov 23, 2017 22:53
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Tahirovic posted:That is actually becoming kind of a theme right now, Ajuuran, Mamluks, Oman, Hormuz, I've seen them all as tributaries pre 1600. What difficulty setting do you play on? I'm not doubting you but I wonder if you have a weird setting or a mod, because I've played more than a dozen games since MoH and seen countless screenshots, and even in the threads where people are complaining about this issue, Hormuz-Iraq is the farthest I've ever seen it, and that's both more of a freak occurance and I'm pretty sure it happened really late in the game. I'd be curious to see a screen shot the next time you see this. In my games it easily goes as far as India (I don't think I've seen non-tributary Bengal even once since MoH) which is an issue in its self but more than that is actually pretty rare, and never so early in the game.
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Nov 27, 2017 15:24
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skasion posted:I feel like making Ming fight for all its tributaries isnt really going to change much though. Ming can still easily crush all its neighbors at any given time so that is just a time delay added to the current system. Well if it can't easily get tributaries beyond its neighbors that'd fix a big part of the issue. Might still be a bit of a bandaid fix though, I'm seriously hoping we'll see some proper changes next patch since it seems to be about Southeast Asia. Also that makes sense about exploration being the cause of it, huh. Actually there was a big phase where I'd see Mamluks colonizing practically every game but I haven't seen it in a while now, I wonder what changed or if it's just from a limited sample size.
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Nov 27, 2017 18:21
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Pretty sure Groogy has access to the actual real figures that say exactly what dates people play until rather than just relying on hearsay, though.
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Dec 1, 2017 04:14
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Buy advisors for the monarch points. Their bonuses are secondary. Mostly, anyway. There are some situations where you genuinely want the bonuses, like missionary strength or morale/discipline. But them not having that shouldn't hold you back from getting an advisor.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:27
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yeah there really should be a way to get stacks to auto drill.
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Dec 3, 2017 17:14
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doubling down on army qualify is only "necessary" to fight a handful of AI nations, normally better composition, positioning, tech, or abusing an alliance will carry you. and quantity is vital for fighting on multiple fronts, or beefing yourself up so you can get a better ally and not get declared on. interesting that drilling nerfs quantity though, I'd have thought it'd buff it since it gives you more of a manpower pool to fall back on.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:56
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anti_strunt posted:I was just getting back into the game and wanted to ask, are any of the early economic buildings considered worth paying for, compared to the ROI of just conquering more provinces? It's not normally a "war or build" choice; there's usually other things keeping you from endless conquest, and for that matter, warring often gets you even more money rather than costing you, since you can punch it out of the AI. If you're in a position where you're just scraping by while surrounded by massively more powerful opponents and every war will put you into crippling debt then you should obviously prioritize other things, but that's a minority of starts and only tends to last for a century or less at that. My rule of thumb is temple / workshop on anything that pays more than .12 a month unless I'm poor as hell, and market on every (helpful) center of trade. The thing about buildings though is even when they, on paper, will take a long-rear end time to pay off, they'll still factor into other things like how strong the AI judges you to be, how big your loans are, how much money cash events can give you and so on. Different people have different outlooks and if you're minmaxing a world conquest then often you do just want even more mercenaries, but in normal play I think the money is more valuable invested in your country than sitting in a war chest. If you're an OPM (or similarly tiny and destitute) then developing can be valuable economically ahead of some other uses for points, but in every other situation it should be low on your list. Develop when you're about to hit point caps, which will actually be pretty often in situations like your HRE minor example. e: oh yeah, gold is another exception.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:39
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Why gems? There are other goods priced at 4, and gems get a bit penalty that hits their price later in the game that e.g. ivory doesn't.
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Dec 4, 2017 22:14
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I think he's too quick to dismiss drilling too. He pretty much exclusively plays world conquest-style, and I can see how it's kinda poo poo in that, but 10% extra discipline in the early (i.e. most important and decisive) battles in a war is actually a big difference, especially if you're not constantly moving your armies everywhere otherwise. I'm pretty blown away by how crap the final morale bonus is though, I thought that seemed like it might actually be significant.
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Dec 4, 2017 23:22
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RabidWeasel posted:I mean the issue with drilling is the opportunity cost, in both time and money. I certainly agree there. If you have long periods of peace where you have excess cash, go wild I guess. He's not saying it's just opportunity cost (which I think is mostly down to WC strats anyway- the ~2 years to fully drill at full professionalism is a fairly normal amount of prep-time before a significant war when you're not trying to smother the whole world at once anyway), he's saying the bonus its self gets attrition'd away before it's meaningful, which I don't really agree with. By the time you're gonna be settling down on a siege, you could well have had the most significant battles already. It depends a bit on the geography for the fort layout, if there aren't endless reinforcing stacks and so on, but there are ways to mitigate that and preserve your drill anyway. Also other things like having a reserve stack drill while you have a forward stack on siege duty and so on.
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Dec 5, 2017 00:48
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Yeah, the reason attrition is capped so low is because the AI can't deal with it. It used to go up to 20% back in early EU4. AI understanding attrition properly so they could do stuff like that again is legitimately my biggest wish for this game, but I kinda understand that it's hard to do.
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Dec 7, 2017 01:01
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A bit of  goin on in this thread huhI agree a couple of the institutions would benefit from different names though
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Jan 1, 2018 21:54
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Finnish Flasher posted:Im close to finishing a ck2 game and importing it to eu4, can I edit some files to choose what traditions/NI's/ambition I get? Yeah it should be super simple to do too. In the importer files look in common\ideas, there'll be a few .txt files, in one of those will be the stuff for your nation. Just change the stuff around in that (base it off what other nations get if you want ideas, and you can pile on as many modifiers as you like) and you're good. If you wanna go deeper you can customize the text for it too in localization\something.yml, just look for the strings from the ideas .txt in one of the importer .yml files/ make your own.
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Jan 11, 2018 02:20
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Poil posted:Why split up such an insignificant island into tiny little crap provinces? Maybe they'll survive until almost 1500 before the great english twat gobbles them up? Pointless waste of time. It wasn't so populous from the start of the game, but Ireland had a huge level of population growth and from my understanding the province setup is meant to take into account changes throughout the course of the game a bit. A while back I made a table of populations vs dev/# of provinces; Ireland's level is perfectly average in 1444 but by the end of the game it's the worst in all of Europe:  (here's the full thing if anyone's curious about other places, incidentally) Especially if they add some mechanics that can help Ireland and Scotland survive longer then I think it's warranted. I was ambivalent towards a British Isles immersion pack at first- it's not like the region is lacking in mechanics or attention. But thinking about it, if they can add some mechanics to help shift the balance there I think it'd be great. England being anachronistically strong in 1444 is one of the more talked about balance problems in the Western European part of the map, so if they do something like a national idea nerf but with other mechanics to balance it (like they did for Russia, although hopefully better this time) so that English power growth is more gradual then I think it could do a lot to change the setup for the game for the better.
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Jan 16, 2018 20:24
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Not at all. Just use notepad++ or something to compare the differences for whatever files you use in the mod vs the new version and adjust accordingly, along with updating the map files and stuff for the new provinces if you did any border modding. I see your mod seems to be directly about the British Isles so maybe there'll be more changes you'll have to make than normal, but updating mods in Paradox games is normally a simple if somewhat tedious process, at least for smaller scale things.
Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jan 17, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 23:59
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double nine posted:what's the recommended nation to play in the south america/peru region I think Cusco's the one people do. They were the historical victors and start out with a god-king.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:06
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One of the devs says later that you will. And drat, this looks amazing. With this and the startup text they seem to be adding some things that can really enhance the flavor for individual countries.
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Jan 23, 2018 16:50
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I think they said it can change when you tag switch, but I don't think there's gonna be any dynamic on-the-fly changes based on what you're doing otherwise, from the looks of things. The lack of dynamicism does look like a (imo the only) major drawback though. If you conquer things in a slightly odd order, like if you get a random PU or something, it's gonna throw it all out of whack. It'll be a bit railroady in general, although considering what missions were before this point that's hardly a significant issue. I wonder what else you could mod this into. Making the rewards more rewarding but with tougher constraints, so it's actually a skill tree sort of thing doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility. I said it before but I really love how they're adding these things that can make individual countries way more fleshed out.
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Jan 23, 2018 19:24
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I doubt they'll be that fleshed out yet, but it seems like the kind of thing they'll add to with each expansion's corresponding region.
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Jan 23, 2018 21:19
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Flavius Belisarius posted:I'm having trouble finding a blank current-version world map I can color in Paint. Does anyone have a link, or is there a better way to do that? If you have photoshop it's simple to make one. Open provinces.bmp, in the filter gallery find glowing edges, crank the sliders so it gives 1 pixel-wide borders:  with magic wand select the black background and put it on a layer behind, then fill it as white, and then set the lines you left on the other layer to black. and then you're done:  I would have just given you the image, but this way you can make one yourself if you wanna base it off any mod's map too, like mine, for instance:  no I'm totally not just self promoting. Unrelatedly, holy gently caress is province modding tedious.
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Jan 27, 2018 01:29
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Jabor posted:I can see modders doing some cool stuff with latent resources. Seriously, I've been working on an early Iron Age mod and finding a way to model the spread of the titular metal that wasn't lame as hell had been a serious problem. This thing though is literally perfect for it. I do hope there'll be more touching on the industrial revolution than just coal and the new manufactory though. It seems like a neat little addition but I'm not sure how much it's gonna shake things up by itself. Maybe it shouldn't though I dunno.
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Jan 31, 2018 01:01
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