Europe Universalis 4

[Garkanh]

Hey. Me and a friend decided to take a break from wow a week ago, and where looking for a new game to keep us occupied for a while.

we looked at Humble, and found Europa Universalis 4 on discount, and thought: hmm, seems interesting.


and we where right. we both like to learn through our failures, and therefore likes to pick the deficult countries. so we started as native Americans, and ofcourse failed the first time. and second time. a 3'rd, 4'th and 5'th game. When we finally found out that starting right next to eachother wasn't ideal, since we wouldn't be able to expand our nation for the first hundred years, i picked Huron, and he Creek. We then conqured all conected tribes, shawnee, pawathan, iroquis, Miami, wilniki and so on, untill we where alone, except for the few seperated tribes like blackfoot and sioux. by this time, we where lvl 4 in administrative, and had just gotten the exploration idea when we saw the spains emerging North from Mexico, and soon after England landed on one of the islands East of Canada. So we quickly colonised around them, trapping them in, securing the coast, westernised, and then took over all of North America, except for the 2 provinces England got in Canada, giving my friend a border at Mexico, to around where the North states would start irl, and me from his border and all around, up and getting california and Canada aswell. spain did get the far North part of california though, but i didn't mind that much.


we then had to deal with a lot of rebels from turning catholic and westernizing, but we pulled through. we fast catched up with the western nations in tech, and sailed East: to Scandinavia. At this time, norway and some other country had destroyed sweden, leaving them only with Stockholm, and two provinces in Finland. yes, on our way from America to Scandinavia, Finland got formed as a nation. i believe they where a nation for about 30 years ingame, before we had destroyed them aswell. so with sweden and Finland out of the way, we started expanding further. parts of poland, denmark, and so on, avoiding the big nations like france, russia and spain.


But then the game ended in 1821. and around 370 years played ingame, 40 hours RL hours spend playing, and we finally thought we knew how to play this game. we had a ton of fun.


then we tryed playing European countries. a lot easyer in defficulty according to the game. but we totally got our asses handed to us. even going to war 15k infantry 10k cavalry and 5k artillery, against 20k infantry from simmilar tech countries, they totally destroyed our armies. i don't know what it is, but the combat system in this game seems to favor the AI so much that it ain't even fun anymore. As a better tech nation, larger army, better general, with ot without crossing bonus and what not, some wars just seems.... so unfair.... to the point of us almost not wanting to play anymore. whatever we do, whatever we try to read up on about how this combat system Works, nothing have an effect. some people say having 33% cavalry, 66% infantry it the best, others 100% infantry, some 50/50.



well, that was my personal best/worst experience with this game. overall, i like the game, but the combat system is just too screwed and complex to make it fun for the average gamer IMO.

[SirRobin]

Try Crusader Kings 2.

[May90]

This game is really amazing. However, it is dead for me. I played EU3 so many times that there is literally nothing to me that presents any challenge (not bragging). And also EU4, while technically superior to EU3, is much easier to play, because money is not really an issue after a century or so (while in EU3, typically, the longer you play, the harder it becomes to pay all debts), and AI sometimes behaves really weird and declares wars it cannot possibly win (like, I had a united Scandinavia, Finland++Sweden+Iceland+Denmark+a few European provinces, and Brandeburg having 3 provinces and 3,000 army declares me war).

Still, excellent game. I wish they removed the time limitation (so that you could play past 1821; there are some mods allowing to do this) and made expansion more punishing: expanding 10 times your initial size in just 50 years is crazy.

[Northy]

Phenomenal deal on Europa Universalis on Steam this weekend. Until June 2nd you can get it for 75% off on Steam. So, $10 for EU4 is worth it by far. Go grab it asap.

[Deleted]

Avoid EU4 for now, the newest patch/expansion is almost unplayable right now, buffed rebels are way brutally strong for both the player and AI, high nationalism stays after 30 years even after coring and apparently agressive expansion is way too high.

[Simulacrum]

EU4 has had a lot of really weird patches/changes since release. If you take breaks between their DLC releases, like I do, you almost have to re-learn the game again, because a lot of the game's core mechanics have changed dramatically. They apparently can't decide on a good way to deal with how to handle expansion, considering how many changes it keeps experiencing all the time.

The combat system is also in near-constant flux. At one point battles take *literally* years in-game, while the next patch tens of thousands of men die in days and armies that previously would've been fighting for a decade all fall over in a week, and then they change it again to some other variation, and then they change the impact that discipline/morale/tech levels have, and then they change something else...

And it seems that with their latest DLC/patch, stuff is back to being fucked again. I've seen One Province Minors generate rebel stacks in the 100k+, as a nation that could barely recruit 8000 men for their army, not to mention how the Aggressive Expansion is all kinds of insane, with France being excommunicated and having all of europe going to war with them after they annex 4 provinces that they have cores on, and a bunch of other issues... if anybody's thinking of picking it up right now, I'd pass on actually playing it for a while.

[SirRobin]

Isn't wealth of nations out now? I'll probably pick it up, but I'll wait for them to clean up the typical post-dlc mess for a bit.

[May90]

The problem with EU4 (and its current state) is that EU3 players didn't accept EU4 very well in the first place. EU4 was nerfed in many aspects, not in terms of complexity, but in terms of difficulty: money has become too easy to get and too hard to spend, AI has been "randomized" which basically resulted in it making awful decisions sometimes, building empire has become much easier since BB (badboy) system was changed and now strongly favored conquerors, cascade alliances made it very easy to quickly capture huge territories provided you are strong enough... So, people raged about these nerfs and wanted their old game back. Developers responded by buffing certain elements - and now people were not happy because it became too hard and too inconvenient to play. So, the way I see it, the developers now are desperately looking for balance between difficulty and convenience. Maybe it is better to wait a few months before they find the spot they're looking for. Or you can always play old versions with mods: there are some very good community-made mods out there.

[Northy]

The deal is too good to pass up. I haven't bought the new xpac yet, but $10 for EU4...hell ya.

[Deleted]

In my opinion it's time to revive this thread for this wonderful game.

Today the next DLC was announced called "Common Sense" (after Thomas Paine's book) what do you guys think of the newest addition to the EU IV collection?

I myself am already in love with the new features, I really like the new free provinces in Europe and the development system. For DLC features I am really digging the parlements so far and I am quite interested in all new government mechanics and the new national churches.

[namelessone]

Try Crusader Kings 2.

QFT

Europa Universalis didn't quite get me in. Start as a large nation and you are overwhelmed with too many options, especially for a newcomer. Start small and you just get stomped by a neighbor.

Crusader Kings is a different kind of beast. You aren't playing as a nation, but as a dynasty. It's more an RPG than strategy really. You control one character, once he dies, you control his most direct heir. It easily matches the depth of EU4, but my favorite part is emphasis on feudal interaction. You really feel how little power one man has and how carefully a ruler had to construct his power base to remain alive and ruling.

[Deleted]

QFT

Europa Universalis didn't quite get me in. Start as a large nation and you are overwhelmed with too many options, especially for a newcomer. Start small and you just get stomped by a neighbor.

Crusader Kings is a different kind of beast. You aren't playing as a nation, but as a dynasty. It's more an RPG than strategy really. You control one character, once he dies, you control his most direct heir. It easily matches the depth of EU4, but my favorite part is emphasis on feudal interaction. You really feel how little power one man has and how carefully a ruler had to construct his power base to remain alive and ruling.

I have played both (CK II 400 hours, EU IV 500 hours and counting) but CK II gets stale much quicker then EU IV does. EU IV also manages to hold it's challenge longer then CK II does, CK II is very very easy to just blob and be the strongest. In eu iv that takes atleast the good part of a game for me (like 40-50% before I am unstoppable).

I myself think Europa Universalis is the better of the two, but it's a matter of taste. EU IV is atleast easier to get into, but much harder to master then CK II. CK II is just a brick wall to get into, but the challenge itself isn't there.

[namelessone]

I have played both (CK II 400 hours, EU IV 500 hours and counting) but CK II gets stale much quicker then EU IV does. EU IV also manages to hold it's challenge longer then CK II does, CK II is very very easy to just blob and be the strongest. In eu iv that takes atleast the good part of a game for me (like 40-50% before I am unstoppable).

I myself think Europa Universalis is the better of the two, but it's a matter of taste. EU IV is atleast easier to get into, but much harder to master then CK II. CK II is just a brick wall to get into, but the challenge itself isn't there.

Haha, I'm at 50 hours myself and I'm nowhere near too easy. Maybe because I never played as christian ruler - I started as norse (tribal pagan) and it's still insanely fun - you can expand very quick, draw huge levies and be the toughest mofo on the block, but you always dread the moment you die and the massive gavelkind succession clusterfuck begins. I managed to reform faith, establish feudalism, but I couldn't survive the transition very well.

[Rukh]

I can't stick with EU4. I have 24 hours in to the game, mostly of half-hour to hour segments of me saying "I'm really going to get in to it this time!". I can do fine on the strategy, I just get bored and don't feel invested. It feels like playing one-player risk. There's just no soul to it.

CKII on the other hand, I have 788 hours in to. Probably one of my favorite games. As other people said, it's as much an RPG as a strategy game. You'll get your first couple of world domination games and soon realize that's not that fun. The game is more about the stories that happen along the way. Do crazy stuff, try stuff out. Its a lot of fun.

[Deleted]

I can't stick with EU4. I have 24 hours in to the game, mostly of half-hour to hour segments of me saying "I'm really going to get in to it this time!". I can do fine on the strategy, I just get bored and don't feel invested. It feels like playing one-player risk. There's just no soul to it.

CKII on the other hand, I have 788 hours in to. Probably one of my favorite games. As other people said, it's as much an RPG as a strategy game. You'll get your first couple of world domination games and soon realize that's not that fun. The game is more about the stories that happen along the way. Do crazy stuff, try stuff out. Its a lot of fun.

Well I am a bit of a history geek so I kinda like playing factions in EU IV that have a lot of historical stuff to do. I never get further then 1650 though most of the time and generally I just play what fits te latest expansion best. Most fun I'm having in MP sessions I am doing with a friend.

That to add; I did start a new CK II game today with CK + as mod. But I do think that this isn't the right thread for a wide CK II discussion.

[SirRobin]

I do like the regular dev dairies we've been getting. Today's looks interesting for the expansion.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...d-2015.887930/

[Halicia]

I do like the regular dev dairies we've been getting. Today's looks interesting for the expansion.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...d-2015.887930/

Could be interesting.... could be another way to completely !@#$ up the game in new and creative ways.

Mind you, I enjoy EU4. I prefer CK2 (like most do, I think?), but they're different. And well... Incas are fun.

[Deleted]

Started playing the MEIOU and Taxes mod for EU 4 for the past week, must say I absolutely love this mod.