Achievements! (specifically steam achievements)

[UberBarleyman]

Dear Sir,

I am addressing this to Paradox Games. I want to say that Europa Universalis IV is easily, hands down, no contest the best strategy game I have ever played, possibly the best game I've ever played period. Which is why it annoys me to no end that I cannot earn achievements in this game unless I manage somehow to defeat the wildly challenging IronMan mode!

I understand creating a mode where console commands cannot be used, I appreciate that! I appreciate it a lot! But, do I have to play with the enemies receiving both AI and Lucky bonuses simultaneously? I know IronMan pretends it's on normal difficulty but I don't believe it for a second even when accounting for these bonuses. Recently I played a game as Brandenburg and I thought I was doing fairly well, I was not very large before all of my allies abandoned me and all of my neighbors went to war with me, if not at the same time at least one after the other, it stops being fun really quickly. It's not just that game, it's a pattern. I have now spent upwards of 300 hours playing Europa. I have attempted multiple IronMan games and all of them have been failures. I'm probably just a terrible player, you know, and I'm fine with that. What I am not fine with is that I can't earn a single achievement without playing IronMan.

Give me some options on earning achievements. Maybe, a game mode with console commands turned off and everything else still adjustable. I just want the little flag to pop up on my screen when I earn a steam achievement... that's it. I don't want to be the best player in the world, and I certainly don't care to get good enough to beat that punishing IronMan Mode. I don't want you to change the mechanics of the game or any other some such rot. I love the game! Very much! That's why this burns my hide all that much more. I don't design video games for a living, but it doesn't seem to me that allowing people to earn achievements in other and EASIER ways would be all that hard to do in relative terms. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the man hours aren't worth it, but I'm sorry to say that if that's the case I won't be buying any more of these games. It's too much pain and agony to sink 300 hours into something without so much as a few flags to show for it, and the added stress of losing over and over again in situations that would have given me no trouble at all outside IronMan even baring using save files.

 

[parlinotomte]

Even in Ironman you can choose between Normal and Hard mode, and whether you want AI bonuses on or not. Maybe you have the hardest settings activated?

 

[UberBarleyman]

I do not have the option to change any of the settings except Dynamic Province names. Is that a fault in my game files or something?

 

[parlinotomte]

If you uncheck the Ironman setting, you can change difficulty and bonuses. If you set them to easy and/or player bonuses, they will default back to normal/normal when you check the Ironman box again. But you can still choose whether to use easy/hard or no/AI bonuses.

 

[magnusvejby]

I wouldn't say ironman is hard, the only change is really that you cant save scam! But what do i know i have almost never played without ironman so if you come from non ironman with easy settings, you should quick get used to ironman, give it a few games.

And achievements should not be too easy either there should be a challenge to them! But still its surprising that it is so hard to get a royal marriage in ironman mode, for some reason only 20% of the players have that achievement!

 

[NwahNerevar]

a lot of people probably don't bother to play on ironman/use custom nations

 

[UberBarleyman]

If you uncheck the Ironman setting, you can change difficulty and bonuses. If you set them to easy and/or player bonuses, they will default back to normal/normal when you check the Ironman box again. But you can still choose whether to use easy/hard or no/AI bonuses.

I know that. What I'm saying is that when the settings default the setting boxes/arrows are grayed out as long as Ironman is selected. I am not able to change the settings except for changing whether there is Dynamic Province Names which is the only setting where the arrows are still red rather than grayed out.

I know you don't know me, but I'm not incompetent or stupid. I seriously cannot change any of the settings.

 

[UberBarleyman]

I wouldn't say ironman is hard, the only change is really that you cant save scam! But what do i know i have almost never played without ironman so if you come from non ironman with easy settings, you should quick get used to ironman, give it a few games.

And achievements should not be too easy either there should be a challenge to them! But still its surprising that it is so hard to get a royal marriage in ironman mode, for some reason only 20% of the players have that achievement!

That's interesting because that's the first achievement I got, of the ones I actually did get. Regardless of how easy or hard it is for you, I find it too difficult for leisure.

 

[UberBarleyman]

If you uncheck the Ironman setting, you can change difficulty and bonuses. If you set them to easy and/or player bonuses, they will default back to normal/normal when you check the Ironman box again. But you can still choose whether to use easy/hard or no/AI bonuses.

Maybe it's just the Steam Version of the game that won't allow you to change the settings in Ironman.

 

[parlinotomte]

I know that. What I'm saying is that when the settings default the setting boxes/arrows are grayed out as long as Ironman is selected. I am not able to change the settings except for changing whether there is Dynamic Province Names which is the only setting where the arrows are still red rather than grayed out.

I know you don't know me, but I'm not incompetent or stupid. I seriously cannot change any of the settings.

That's how it is supposed to work. If you look at the settings and they say Hard difficulty or AI bonuses, close the settings box, uncheck Ironman, go to settings again and change the values to Normal and/or No bonuses. You can then check the Ironman box again and start the game on Normal difficulty without bonuses.

I don't think you're stupid or anything, I had played this game a very long time before I found out myself

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I wouldn't say ironman is hard, the only change is really that you cant save scam! But what do i know i have almost never played without ironman so if you come from non ironman with easy settings, you should quick get used to ironman, give it a few games.

And achievements should not be too easy either there should be a challenge to them! But still its surprising that it is so hard to get a royal marriage in ironman mode, for some reason only 20% of the players have that achievement!

Ironman doesn't block save scumming. Ironman's functionality is to make save scumming less convenient, along with playing the game in general since monthly autosave adds 1.5-3 hours to a playthrough if you go to 1821.

 

[UberBarleyman]

That's how it is supposed to work. If you look at the settings and they say Hard difficulty or AI bonuses, close the settings box, uncheck Ironman, go to settings again and change the values to Normal and/or No bonuses. You can then check the Ironman box again and start the game on Normal difficulty without bonuses.

I don't think you're stupid or anything, I had played this game a very long time before I found out myself

It changes the settings back when I choose Ironman, every time. It doesn't matter what I had selected before.

 

[GiftGruen]

Really? That is not intended behaviour.

It is intended that you cannot play with player bonuses or easy AI difficulty, and I think at least the player bonuses had a habit of being reset to AI bonuses instead of no bonuses, but only if you selected player bonuses. But normal/no bonuses is and has been since v1.00 the standard options of every EU IV ironman achievement run, except if you for some reason wanted to make yourself an even harder time. If anything, you should report this as a bug!

 

[UberBarleyman]

Really? That is not intended behaviour.

It is intended that you cannot play with player bonuses or easy AI difficulty, and I think at least the player bonuses had a habit of being reset to AI bonuses instead of no bonuses, but only if you selected player bonuses. But normal/no bonuses is and has been since v1.00 the standard options of every EU IV ironman achievement run, except if you for some reason wanted to make yourself an even harder time. If anything, you should report this as a bug!

Oh! That explains it! Okay, thank you.