who are these people who think that agressive expansion is properly scaled? if you attack novgorod as muscovy at game start and take 4 provinces (much less than what actually happened!) then Lithuania, Golden Horde, Kazan, Sweden, and Ryazan form a coalition against you with Novgorod. Novgorod declares war with "coalition causus belli" 5 years later. Historical expansion is impossible in many cases without overcoming enormous ahistorical coalitions.
These naysayers are citing playthroughs as idiot OPM europeans, where the only thing stopping expansion is human brain vs ai "brain", like being willing to take out more loans than an ai is hardcapped to do, which is something that a 3 year old could probably overcome. You are not slammed against arbitrary game mechanics that larger nations are. You fail to (or more likely refuse to) understand that these fabricated constraints on expansion are ruing the experience of Europa for most of its players. We are no-lifes on the forum for the game, which makes us a minority. Most players are trying to play this game without the guidance of the official forums, reasonably so. What do they know about the tactics of vassal feeding?
What is Europa now, seems to be the question. It is certainly not a history simulator; without massive vassal feeding, forming the historical borders of Ottomans, Qing, Russia, Mughals, etc are most likely impossible for a great majority of players. If it is made to simulate alternative history, then shouldn't we be able to improve on what was done historically? Do we think the Ottomans made 100% correct decisions in their conquests? With hindsight, should a player not be able to correct their mistakes, face new obstacles as a result, and be able to, with strategy, achieve even greater things?
And to this guy, FearTheAmish: you tell him it is not CKII, right? but you cite all the wrong reasons. Outside of combat, CKII has a million things to do. That game is extremely immerse, with many tasks and goals to entertain players outside of war. Europa does not. You talk about "trade", which is certainly not fun, I am laughing as I type this because of how insane your claims are. While you wait for a coalition of earth that formed from you taking Beijing to cool down, click on trade buildings in all of your provinces. Yeah that is exhilarating. Civ V, despite how much it is denounced by paradox fans, has a million more things to do compared to EU. EU is war, and wait for more war. Civ has city building, and many more avenues to victory other than war. If EU IV just offers war as a thing to do, why is it made so decidedly unfun not by being difficult or challenging, but by being made frustrating, by artificial barriers to player accomplishments.
"You can always sit there and not do anything" is not a valid response to broken game mechanics.
