1.3.x = least fun to play version of the game. Please make the game more FUN!!

[alanschu]

This. The concept of "challenge" seems to be completely lost on modern game developers and modern gamers. A challenging game forces the player to use his brain in order to come up with the best solution for whatever problem he has. Want to conquer Italy? Fine, deal with the superior armies of the League of Venice first. Oh, you managed to beat them? Enjoy your new blob (and your new rebels! ). What we have instead is "fight a friggin World War and then take one, TWO provinces max, then wait 15 years or else Ottomans and Ming will hide under your bed and murder you".

If you enjoy dealing with illogical and unfair constraints then I have some news for you: you are NOT a "hardcore gamer", you are just a masochistic kid. And when you call others "Sissy WC whiners" you make that abundantly clear.

I'm not sure where you're feeling the restraint of taking 1-2 provinces max. I tend to take as much as my overextension allows and am not finding myself overly crippled by Aggressive Expansion. To be fair, the game I'm currently playing as is Muscovy->Russia so from mid to late game I had two very different fronts to exploit, but my entire time as Muscovy (i.e. not a large multi-continental empire) I didn't come across as unnecessarily constrained by aggressive expansion in the early game and my first war with Novgorod I took as much as my overextension allowed, and then took Ryazan, and then pushed into Kazan. The Hordes made a coalition against me, but I had other areas that I wanted to exploit and it wasn't really a huge issue. Given I was an expansionist belligerent, however, it didn't really surprise me that coalitions were made nor did I find it unfair.

Given that EU3 had badboy which WAS illogical (everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, now hates me because I passed a magical number) I consider aggressive expansion to be a marked improvement as it's much more regional which, to me, comes across as pretty "logical."

 

[billclintonmask]

I think the problem with making "something (substantial) to do" in the downtime would mean you'd have to manage that same process during war as well.

I would be into a couple of fixes that could streamline some of the issues people have.
1) Make alliances/vassal/PU with a nation over X base tax cost 2 Diplomatic Relations instead of 1. That way you won't get the Austria-Spain-Poland-Russia alliances mid-late game. Maybe just Austria-Spain-Poland, which is a bit more manageable. I would say that Military Access and Guarantees should still cost 1 however.
2) Change how provinces are cored. You can select a province to core at no cost, other than time and continued OE. For each additional province beyond that first one make it a -1 ADM/month until its cored. Similar to going over diplo relations or military leaders.
3) Coalitions: make being in a coalition cost a Diplo Relation. That way, you get a bunch of countries who hate you right away, but unless they REALLY hate you, they'll probably want that Relation slot back after some time.

As for what I started this post with, how to fix the "downtime" aspect, I really can't think of anything other than expanding trade without completely adding new mechanics to the game. Maybe there could be different phases of governance you could switch between. Something like: Peacetime, Prelude to War, War, Repress the Populace. Each mode having its own useful modifiers, decisions, and random events. For instance: peacetimegives you -build cost, +diplomatic reputation. Prelude to War: +manpower recovery speed. War: +Discipline, you get the idea. There would also be requirements before switching between them, with something like Peacetime or Repression requiring a higher threshold than the Prelude to War, or maybe not every mode is available to every government type. Just kind of brainstorming with this idea here.

 

[alanschu]

a magic power to protect them from losing land to you because they are in that alliance is not reasonable.

I'll agree that I don't like this mechanic of coalitions.

 

[Lakedaimon]

I think the problem with making "something (substantial) to do" in the downtime would mean you'd have to manage that same process during war as well.

^this

it's one of the main reasons I no longer play any total war games. It's annoyed me ever since M2TW

 

[WeissRaben]

I think the problem with making "something (substantial) to do" in the downtime would mean you'd have to manage that same process during war as well.

I would be into a couple of fixes that could streamline some of the issues people have.
1) Make alliances/vassal/PU with a nation over X base tax cost 2 Diplomatic Relations instead of 1. That way you won't get the Austria-Spain-Poland-Russia alliances mid-late game. Maybe just Austria-Spain-Poland, which is a bit more manageable. I would say that Military Access and Guarantees should still cost 1 however.
2) Change how provinces are cored. You can select a province to core at no cost, other than time and continued OE. For each additional province beyond that first one make it a -1 ADM/month until its cored. Similar to going over diplo relations or military leaders.
3) Coalitions: make being in a coalition cost a Diplo Relation. That way, you get a bunch of countries who hate you right away, but unless they REALLY hate you, they'll probably want that Relation slot back after some time.

As for what I started this post with, how to fix the "downtime" aspect, I really can't think of anything other than expanding trade without completely adding new mechanics to the game. Maybe there could be different phases of governance you could switch between. Something like: Peacetime, Prelude to War, War, Repress the Populace. Each mode having its own useful modifiers, decisions, and random events. For instance: peacetimegives you -build cost, +diplomatic reputation. Prelude to War: +manpower recovery speed. War: +Discipline, you get the idea. There would also be requirements before switching between them, with something like Peacetime or Repression requiring a higher threshold than the Prelude to War, or maybe not every mode is available to every government type. Just kind of brainstorming with this idea here.

It is not news that a country often gets mismanaged during war. Any system that gets added for peacetime SHOULD be possible to leave on its own, but it would have consequences later on. If you are a real-life 6-6-6, you might manage to move EVERYTHING at once; otherwise, let something go. I can't honestly see what would be so terrible with it: in HoI, people rarely build up a strong economy while they are maneuvering around Russia.

 

[No idea]

I likethe game as it is, even if it still needs some nerfing. I only agree with PUs. Some o fthem should be almost impossible to get or maintain. For example, in my current game i formed a pu (me as boss) with a gigantic GB ( i was even bigger) and GB was prtestant while i was catholic¡. Those things should not happen

 

[G_Morgan]

I'm not sure where you're feeling the restraint of taking 1-2 provinces max. I tend to take as much as my overextension allows and am not finding myself overly crippled by Aggressive Expansion. To be fair, the game I'm currently playing as is Muscovy->Russia so from mid to late game I had two very different fronts to exploit, but my entire time as Muscovy (i.e. not a large multi-continental empire) I didn't come across as unnecessarily constrained by aggressive expansion in the early game and my first war with Novgorod I took as much as my overextension allowed, and then took Ryazan, and then pushed into Kazan. The Hordes made a coalition against me, but I had other areas that I wanted to exploit and it wasn't really a huge issue. Given I was an expansionist belligerent, however, it didn't really surprise me that coalitions were made nor did I find it unfair.

Given that EU3 had badboy which WAS illogical (everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, now hates me because I passed a magical number) I consider aggressive expansion to be a marked improvement as it's much more regional which, to me, comes across as pretty "logical."

5 minutes ago I took 2 provinces from Hungary. Ottomans declared war for Corfu and then a coalition of all Italy and Austria declared war on me. Given that both sides have completely unreasonable demands because of the -60 length of war that game is now a complete waste of time. Of course I was working on alliances with France and Naples I can't sign because my opinion of them is too low (something which should be removed from the game complete).

As is standard with EU4 restart and do something else. I think this is my last ironman game though. Too frustrating dealing with pointlessly arbitrary mechanics.

 

[Brawler]

No

Paint the map my color and/or WC interests me not one bit.

No game mechanic is stopping you from NOT playing your way. How selfish of all the players defending no-WC to be the norm demanding others play THEIR way and enjoy it. Restrictions do not effect your style of play one bit so why do you care so much about how other people should play the game? How are these changes going to affect your play style in a negative way?

Edit: Correction for clarification.

 

[Eyestabber]

How are these changes going to affect your play style in a negative way?

Answer: they believe themselves to be some sort of gaming nobility. "World painting" is beneath them. WC being impossible means that EU IV is a noble game, a game about trade, diplomacy, colonization etc. A game about the beauty of the renaissance. If arbitrary restrictions are necessary to prevent EU IV from becoming a dreadful, distasteful, plebeian WARGAME, then so be it. But if people start conquering the world, no matter how much effort they had to put in order to do it, then EU IV becomes, well, just another strategy game. And they are no longer special for playing it.

 

[gaius valerius]

Hahaha... you funny guy.

 

[alanschu]

"World painting" is beneath them.

I'm more of the opinion that "If the game can be painted entirely in one colour, then perhaps the game is too easy."

How selfish of all the players defending no-WC to be the norm demanding others play THEIR way and enjoy it.

There's nothing stopping you from painting the world your colour. You just need to deal with the overextension. Or are you suggesting that a gigantic nation that seeks to aggressively overtake the entire world wouldn't have to deal with such a thing?


As a game dev, this idea of "let me play the game specifically the way that I want" is aggravating, because it's not possible. For example, would you be satisfied if painting the world your colour was trivially easy? Would it be sufficient if coring simply wasn't required? I mean, it'd "let you play the game the way that you want" right? Or is there more to it than simply "I want to paint the world my colour?" It's not hard to imagine the infinite number of ways that EU4 cannot possibly satisfy a desire to "play the game the way I want to play it."

I strongly recommend you play The Stanley Parable, which is a deconstruction of the relationship between game players and game designers and reconciling the conflicting demands that they have on the other. Because if any side is unrelenting in their demands and position, ultimately they're just going to let themselves get frustrated, whether they be the designer or the player.

5 minutes ago I took 2 provinces from Hungary. Ottomans declared war for Corfu and then a coalition of all Italy and Austria declared war on me. Given that both sides have completely unreasonable demands because of the -60 length of war that game is now a complete waste of time. Of course I was working on alliances with France and Naples I can't sign because my opinion of them is too low (something which should be removed from the game complete).

I do agree that the human player's "in game opinion" of the other nation is rather silly. Evidently it's in to try to prevent... something (not sure what).

Which nation are you, however? Were those the ONLY two provinces you've ever taken? Is the game "a complete waste of time" because you'll probably have to lose a war from time to time? What constitutes a "complete waste of time?" The glory I love about Ironman is that, when bad things happen to me (which would historically cause a reload), I try to tough it out. Sometimes it means I outright lose the game (i.e. XCOM), but other times it means I end up having a pretty interesting narrative that I historically wouldn't have gotten because I would have reloaded in the past.

I mean, have you never declared war on a nation because it was already at war with someone else and you stood to benefit from said war because your target was in a weaker position?

 

[LiberiusX]

No game mechanic is stopping you from NOT playing your way. How selfish of all the players defending no-WC to be the norm demanding others play THEIR way and enjoy it. Restrictions do not effect your style of play one bit so why do you care so much about how other people should play the game? How are these changes going to affect your play style in a negative way?

Edit: Correction for clarification.

??? ??? What? I never even came close to insinuating that the way I play is the only way the game should be played. I merely stated that I enjoyed playing the way Gaius did and was retorting to Mann's pompous comments about expansion being the only way to play. I think I pretty well made my point that it is not, because his and WeissRaben's 'rebuttals'(below) only talk about how boring that makes the game to them, yet fail to admit that a survival play style requires no expansion.

Quit making straw man accusations.

Did that. It's EVEN more boring, because if you aren't threatened directly you aren't doing anything. I really, REALLY would like to play survival - if only there was anything to do after stabilizing the diplomatic situation. Get an alliance in shape, one RM or two, and you are ready to fast forward to 80 years later. Then shift one alliance, give transit rights, 75 years more.

Survival is way easier than expansion, especially with the current diplomacy system.

Hell, in most cases, you can't get wiped out even if you try.

That's all fine and grand, but I don't care how boring it is to you, it still makes the point that expansion isn't required to play and for some people to have fun. By the way, survival isn't just about surviving ie holding on to that last province; it's about keeping what you have. IE. Genoa keeping Kaffa and Azov. Venice keeping its holdings. etc. etc.

Feel free to retort, I've shared my opinion and I won't bother replying. Gaius, I advise you do the same.

 

[Anthropoid]

A strong defensive alliance to stop you is perfectly reasonable, a magic power to protect them from losing land to you because they are in that alliance is not reasonable.

I don't care if you triple the military power of a coalition member because of how scared they are you expanded, I care that you have no chance of losing, and even after you beat them completely you still do not win.

I agree completely. Coalitions as they stand are too impregnable. The ability to stomp on individual members and get them to drop out shouldn't have been taken away, it does make them feel artificial.

There are a few other qualitative design issues, as well as perhaps quantitative issues (I speculate cause I don't know those calcs well enough) that I think need adjusting. But arguming for adjusting, tweaking, changing or otherwise adapting the existing coalition system is different than simply arguing against it.

I don't necessarily think that the player should be given a "longer leash" when it comes to AE threshold. But certainly changes to the system seem warranted.

The reason I say that I do not think the player should be given more 'space' to expand: I've played the game by two distinct styles (all as France so it is comparable): 1) "AE be Damned!" and I conquer just like most gamers do in most grand strategy games; (2) A relatively 'balanced' conqueror/diplomat style in which I stop to consider who is more likely to get into a coalition if I annex A, or B province, how much effort to do I need to spend to ingratiate myself, and how do I sequence my diplomatic and military actions in order to achieve my goals effectively. In sum, for one of the first times ever in a strategy game, I am actually INCLUDING diplomatic thinking in my military thinking.

The end results of these two playstyles speak for themselves I think: (1) I get swamped by a coalition, or maybe I just barely manage to diffuse it before it grows, etc. (2) Coalitions may form, but they rarely grow beyond 2 or 3 members, often only 1, and even when they do grow to 3, my post-war diplomatic efforts almost always manage to diffuse the situation and within 5 to 10 years, I am right back to fabricating claims, and annexing provinces.

The fact that coalitions make this style of gaming an engaging and interesting if not requisite to attain high levels of accomplishment is all the reason I need to both applaud PI and plead for them DO NOT TAKE COALITIONS OUT OF THE GAME!

Adjust them, tweak them, redesign them but this dynamic adds so much to the game it is truly a revolutionary development in strategy gaming. I wouldn't say it is perfect yet, but it is innovative and promising.

The other thing that coalitions do is make wars less bland. Instead of every war resulting in effectively the same thing: cede a province, now the fact that doing this incessantly is untenable makes it worthwhile to engage in 'ancillary' or 'elective' wars for the purpose of gaining prestige, trade power, ducats, taking apart big AI kingdoms, transferring cores, etc., etc.

Without coalitions these other peace settlement deals would have much less 'value' and the war as diplomacy feel of the game would suffer tremendously.

I hope they work in coalitions, tweak them, perhaps come up with a "non-coalition mode" to satisfy those who just simply hate them, but if anything I hope that they expand on and model along with adjusting it.

If they can do it, I do think they would make a broad segment of players happy if they can include a "Tinman" mode in which Coalitions do not form, but otherwise the game is essentially the same.

I'm sorry if I offend the feelings of some folks here but that's how I feel about this game. It's just not fun anymore.

Part of me wants to play good ol' EU2 with MyMap-AGCEEP rather than EU4. That was the best EU experience I've ever had.

That is alarming. I do hope PI will try to bring the fun back into it for those who feel it has become unfun.

Is it safe to say that the coalition dynamic is the main thing that has made it unfun for you?

 

[unmerged(798670)]

I'm more of the opinion that "If the game can be painted entirely in one colour, then perhaps the game is too easy."
There's nothing stopping you from painting the world your colour. You just need to deal with the overextension.

Yes there are things stopping "world painting." I'm not even sure overextension makes it into the top 5 reasons that WC isn't possible barring bug abuse.

In practice a game is much much more likely to be too difficult to be fun, than for it to be so easy it can't be fun. It is also much much easier as a player to make a game harder in a way that it becomes fun to you than to make a game easier but still challenging and fun.

Considering the "easy mode" of this game existed before that everyone is up in arms about ruining the fun of the game was still so difficult less than .1% of the playerbase managed a WC, it would be a laughable viewpoint if we weren't forced to play this newer version or nothing.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I can definitely understand the desire for more casual/easy ("relaxed" is my personally preferred term) play, in which the mechanics don't restrict the possible narratives to such a high degree (there are many historically plausible narratives that just aren't feasible in EU4 given the current mechanics). But that said, I don't really understand why you'd really want easy (relatively speaking) WC; it's not exactly historically plausible in the narrative sense, and from a gamist perspective that should at best be the holy grail of challenges. Sure, there are definitely some mechanics related to the possibility of WC that need tweaking/overhauling either way, but I just don't really see why WC is so enthralling to people. It seems sort of like complaining that a game like Monopoly isn't designed to facilitate a single player gaining ownership of every property on the board.

The whole "allowing easier WC doesn't affect those not interested in WC because no one is forcing you to do it" line of argument just isn't substantive, however. It's like saying the optional ability to see your opponents hands in poker should be added because "no one would force you to utilize that ability". Altering the balance and tuning of the game's mechanics to accommodate new possibilities does impact the experience, even for the people who don't want such options in the first place, simply speaking.

And I'm no hardcore/elitist EU veteran; EU4 is the first Paradox game I've played significantly. Personally I don't think war and conquest are the only thing EU4 is about, but that's not tied to any superiority complex.

 

[unmerged(798670)]

I do not consider the amount of effort necessary to achieve a WC in 1.1 to be easy, if less than 1 of 1000 people can/were willing to do it, it is not a minor undertaking. 100s of hours of careful planning and execution is sufficiently difficult for a "normal" setting in my mind.


If the rules of poker allowed you to see someone's hand whenever you asked to look, and you never asked to look, the poker game is identical. It is completely "substantive" that you could add an optional mechanic without altering the play or enjoyment of someone who does not use it.

 

[mcmanusaur]

If the rules of poker allowed you to see someone's hand whenever you asked to look, and you never asked to look, the poker game is identical. It is completely "substantive" that you could add an optional mechanic without altering the play or enjoyment of someone who does not use it.

So you're saying having the ability to look at people's hands doesn't change all the strategic dynamics, encouraging people to revisit their whole way of playing? For strategy games (which EU4 is despite its open-endedness), whether you want to utilize an optional mechanic is irrelevant; every option impacts the viability and optimality of any particular strategy. What you're asking people to do is purposely play sub-optimally so as to not achieve what is by their estimation an implausible outcome. That's not somehow more inclusive than excluding the "option" in the option, because you're still inconveniencing a particular demographic. And let's not forget that what the WC-advocates desire is not new features (which you could conceivably ignore), but a re-balance of existing features. Personally I think it would be great to overhaul everything with new systems, but that doesn't seem to be what WC-advocates advocate.

 

[unmerged(798670)]

So you're saying having the ability to look at people's hands doesn't change all the strategic dynamics.

If it is not used that is entirely correct. The people who do not want it will lose nothing by it existing, and the people who do want it gain everything by it existing.

 

[mcmanusaur]

If it is not used that is entirely correct. The people who do not want it will lose nothing by it existing, and the people who do want it gain everything by it existing.

But a strategy game is more than a buffet restaurant where you pick and choose what you want. Every mechanical component of EU is interconnected and altering it will change all of the game theory decisions that make up EU4's strategic gameplay experience.

 

[unmerged(798670)]

You can keep trying to change the scope of my point all you like, you made a false claim and I called you on it. The fact of the matter is if you chose not to use an option that is added, the game is identical because without that option the games are identical.