ADM points need to be revisited

[tapewormlondon]

I think rather than ADM being revisited, DIP and Mil should be, in order to make them more scarce. MP points should be an extremely valuable commodity. As OP states, only ADM is at the moment really

 

[penco]

This allows the player to choose what sort of game they want. Most of the time I play for historical borders or colonial conquests and I rarely come up against the AE wall so I don't need to vassal feed. When I play that way I also don't consider overextension or coalitions to be a problem.

It just seems weird to have two different rulesets for expansion. If you play for historical borders, couldn't you just limit yourself by roleplay and house rules? I don't know why you need to have a game mechanic in place just to put a limit on yourself.

If that's the case, it would be better if there was just an option to turn AE and overextension off, rather than creating a simple loophole to avoid them altogether.

 

[grisamentum]

I thought AE and overextension were supposed to limit blobbing empires, not to encourage you to create blobbing empires through one specific channel.

What's the point of even having AE and overextension if you can deal with it in such an easy way? It's like those mechanics are just there as a slap on the wrist to new players who don't know better.

Centralized blobbing empires, yes. But the point of vassal states is that it's more decentralized with at least the appearance of home rule, even though the vassal doesnt really control its foreign policy.

 

[penco]

Centralized blobbing empires, yes. But the point of vassal states is that it's more decentralized with at least the appearance of home rule, even though the vassal doesnt really control its foreign policy.

But even a vassal empire is still quite centralized. You might have 8 vassals at the absolute maximum, and you are integrating them all the time. A gigantic continent-spanning empire with a handful of 5-province vassal states is not exactly an example of decentralization.

 

[Djoums]

Well, there are (at least) two ways to play this game. You can play it as a historical nation simulator or you can play it as a map painting conquest game.

That's somewhat offtopic and discussed elsewhere but I don't see how you can play the game in a historical way.
Most of the time you will get your historical borders way before 1600 and then there is basically nothing to do. Conquering, directly or through vassals, is the only option left. So in the end it all comes down to one way of playing.

 

[blaidd]

That's somewhat offtopic and discussed elsewhere but I don't see how you can play the game in a historical way.
Most of the time you will get your historical borders way before 1600 and then there is basically nothing to do. Conquering, directly or through vassals, is the only option left. So in the end it all comes down to one way of playing.

Well, I've made it to 1821 in all but one of my EU IV games without ever conquering all of Europe so we'll have to disagree that pure conquest is the only way to play the game.

You are correct that there isn't much in game incentive to do anything else.

I will argue that there isn't much in game incentive to conquer either. Once you get to say, the size of France, why do you need more land? What's the point? You can already easily win wars against the entire world. You already have more money than you'll ever need. Resources don't mean anything. Taking land beyond that point provides little benefit. At some point you're just killing your neighbors for no reason at all.

So why do you feel driven to expand? Boredom?

Yes, the lack of meaningful things to do in the late game is one of the great failings of EU IV, which many of us hope will be addressed in future DLC/expansions.

 

[penco]

Once you get to say, the size of France, why do you need more land? What's the point? You can already easily win wars against the entire world. You already have more money than you'll ever need. Resources don't mean anything. Taking land beyond that point provides little benefit. At some point you're just killing your neighbors for no reason at all.

So why do you feel driven to expand? Boredom?

Partly boredom, and partly because it's there. It is something tangible that you can look at and see "hey, I could be doing slightly better if I owned this other land." If you don't play for conquest, there is no real tangible goal. I guess you could go for trade or colonies, or even cultural homogeneity, but those are all more or less variations of watching progress bars tick. Not exactly engaging gameplay. Plus, what are you going to do with all that money from trade or colonies? Ultimately money serves the purpose of conquest in this game. You can't do much else with it, other than create buildings that either generate more money or help you militarily.