Already waiting patches - fastest Paradox game that I stopped playing

[jimkoons]

Honestly, it might be the Paradox Release with the least amount of serious bugs and the most polish i´ve witnessed so far. Yes, i´ve seen catholicism being replaced by catharism within 20 years. But i´ve also seen Catholicsim being stable for hundreds of years. I actually want stuff like the conversation of europe to catharism to happen; Not always, but sometimes and so far, at least for me, the frequency of it happening is okay.

I can´t really even verify the bugged ai or the common complaint about seduction; Yes the "disputed heritage" event fires a bit often, but judging by looks, genetic traits and the developer console most kids end up being mine. The ally a.i. is pretty good, i have no complains in this regard; There are some issues with the embark a.i. but nothing game breaking or too constant.

I can totally understand that people are annoyed at any bug; Especially if a playthrough you have invested a lot into ends up being ended by one.

But compared to other releases and patches? Bugs were to be expected. But i´m pleasantly surprised at the lack of *serious* bugs.

I have absolutely not encounter the same pattern as you. Personally the catholic faith melting down is a 100% sure after 100-150 years of gameplay. The reasons are well known with the sinful bishop event spam, which is certainly a bug, and the decrease of fervor from holy wars.
I had to download a mod that retrieve the fervor penalty from sinful bishops in order to have a somewhat interesting playthrough... If people are fine with the HRE turning to cathar/copt/islam faith good for them... personally I find it immersion breaking.

For embarcation, I think the problem is the timing which is way too short. I think AI computes the shortest way, does not care about the cost and going by sea being nearly everytime the fastest path, it uses it way too much.

Same for the disputed heritage: I downloaded a mod that only allows lustful characters to perform seduction schemes and another one that disabled the disputed heritage scheme. For this last one this is definitely a bug, no doubt about it, after 1200 it happens to nearly all your heirs. This is definitely not by design.

But I do agree that the foundations are solid and it's more a question of tweaking numbers than huge gameplay design problems. Fervor might need a little revamp imo and disputed heritage should be something we could act on but that's pretty much it. We will see!

 

[Bamilus]

Its a great game and I can see the potential but yea I've set it down for now until those things get fixed or reliably modded. I'm a historical RPer and unlike the vocal social media crowd I find games like LOL POPE IS A NAKED DUDE get a little boring pretty quickly.

Also getting sick and tired of people trying to explain how Byzantines in England and Swedes in Anatolia is "realistic border gore". People need to actually study history and look at maps. Yea, within the HRE there was border gore but historical border gore is insanely tame compared to what happens in most of these games.

 

[zorkman]

I have had a blast so far but their are certain things that stand out & are an annoyance.

1. The most overpowered has to be the dread feature. Just sacrifice a load of infidels & get it up to full & most of your subjects are terrified of you. Enjoyed it when I first discovered this, but now see it as a blatant exploit. A good example is how recently my ruler Emperor of Franconia died of stress (my fault for getting that silly achievement) & putting my 7 year old sickly son on the throne. Everyone hated him, I mean everyone, from vassals to courtiers including his Mum, the powerful queen of Leon & vassal (which is also ridiculous by itself) but no worries, as although with nil dread most of the realm was terrified of me. Some joined factions & fearing the worst, I sacrificed some infidels in Prison to get up to 100 dread, & most fell away. Twenty years later & in full health I am extremely powerful again.

2. Peasant revolts. I know these popped up in history but not every few years. Usually when I am on a crusade & out of the country & up they pop, & eventually having to chase them down.

3. Talking of crusades, does the pope have to call one every 10 years or so, which are normally in same places due to victorious crusaders going native & swapping religions. Why? The crusaders would have never converted, so it is ridiculous.

4. Assisting allies in wars. You get a message to assist someone in a war, but when checking up the enemy the notice disappears, & you can no longer join, saying to far away. As Emperor of Franconia had message to help King of Andalesia. Lost message then when trying to join said distance to far. I had the Kingdom of Galicia & the whole of Portugal for pities sake next door.

There are lots of other things discovered but I expect those & the ones listed will be sorted out shortly, but overall I have enjoyed myself, in what has been a successful release.

 

[mackintosh]

My number one pet peeve is actually suicidal knights, and the AI's complete lack of self-preservation. The first thing I do (unless I specifically want to off someone) is ban all my family from serving as knights. The AI has no qualms about sending their entire line of succession into every battle, no matter the odds.

 

[Bamilus]

I have had a blast so far but their are certain things that stand out & are an annoyance.

1. The most overpowered has to be the dread feature. Just sacrifice a load of infidels & get it up to full & most of your subjects are terrified of you. Enjoyed it when I first discovered this, but now see it as a blatant exploit. A good example is how recently my ruler Emperor of Franconia died of stress (my fault for getting that silly achievement) & putting my 7 year old sickly son on the throne. Everyone hated him, I mean everyone, from vassals to courtiers including his Mum, the powerful queen of Leon & vassal (which is also ridiculous by itself) but no worries, as although with nil dread most of the realm was terrified of me. Some joined factions & fearing the worst, I sacrificed some infidels in Prison to get up to 100 dread, & most fell away. Twenty years later & in full health I am extremely powerful again.

2. Peasant revolts. I know these popped up in history but not every few years. Usually when I am on a crusade & out of the country & up they pop, & eventually having to chase them down.

3. Talking of crusades, does the pope have to call one every 10 years or so, which are normally in same places due to victorious crusaders going native & swapping religions. Why? The crusaders would have never converted, so it is ridiculous.

4. Assisting allies in wars. You get a message to assist someone in a war, but when checking up the enemy the notice disappears, & you can no longer join, saying to far away. As Emperor of Franconia had message to help King of Andalesia. Lost message then when trying to join said distance to far. I had the Kingdom of Galicia & the whole of Portugal for pities sake next door.

There are lots of other things discovered but I expect those & the ones listed will be sorted out shortly, but overall I have enjoyed myself, in what has been a successful release.

#3 - what I don't get is why the Pope calls so many crusades when fervor is low and when a successful Crusade lowers fervor? The (dubious) argument made by Paradox and other people to justify losing fervor on Crusade victory is that "well they'd get lazy after a successful Crusade!". Despite the fact that the opposite is actually shown in history, it makes no game sense that a lazy Catholic pope would be insanely zealous by declaring non-stop crusades.

 

[carniv]

Yeah. Basic stuff that doesn't work. Didn't need to play many hours until it became the classic "patch when" waiting room. I don't understand how they gave this game so many 10/10 reviews. Perhaps it's just pandering for the reddit audience who only care about memes. That being said this game has huge potential (like PDX games usually do) and I'm eager to see future patches, dlcs etc.

 

[DreadGrunt]

Warfare is the biggest problem for me and the thing that makes me want to stop playing. If the Bronze Age mod didn't exist I probably would have shelved the game to wait for patches honestly.

 

[zorkman]

#3 - what I don't get is why the Pope calls so many crusades when fervor is low and when a successful Crusade lowers fervor? The (dubious) argument made by Paradox and other people to justify losing fervor on Crusade victory is that "well they'd get lazy after a successful Crusade!". Despite the fact that the opposite is actually shown in history, it makes no game sense that a lazy Catholic pope would be insanely zealous by declaring non-stop crusades.

I lost count on the amount of crusades to Syria. Basher al-Assad & is father were amateurs in the killing stakes compared to this lot. I am amazed anyone in Syria survived the middle ages with all these crusades.

 

[Bamilus]

I lost count on the amount of crusades to Syria. Basher al-Assad & is father were amateurs in the killing stakes compared to this lot. I am amazed anyone in Syria survived the middle ages with all these crusades.

And it just kills Catholicism with the fervor loss (also the sinful bishop event). Imagine using the same bad logic for EU4: if the Catholics successfully win the Thirty Years War and/or the Counter-Reformation then their fervor would drop (they'd get lazy, remember?) thereby spawning more Protestant rebels and eventually destroying Catholicism. Brilliant.

I get why it was added (to stop snowballing), but it's a terrible fix and there's better and more historical ways to limit expansion. Perhaps it would've been better if they used a separate statistic to represent this decadence, besides fervor, which is linked to heresy outbreak.

 

[Dearmad]

Same as OP. In fact I find myself messing around with IR instead now....

Oh well, CK3 hopefully will get it's legs underneath itself. Just kinda a go nowhere game for the moment.

 

[PhilzuNeide]

It seems like 0% of the development time went to QA or fine tuning the game mechanics. You can’t tell me that a good and extensive QA department wouldn’t have catched that the AI in many situations acts completely brain dead (money, religion, matrilineal etc) or that the fervor mechanic kills Catholicism in many runs.

Paradox, please, at least pretend to test your games before release!

 

[Urkaun]

The sinful bishops must be a bug. Catholicism just disintegrates not long after any game start with heresies because of fervor. Paradoxically, no pun intended, the Pope and Church still remain rich as fuck and armed with all the mercs despite every European ruler, their family and pet dog converting to Catharism, Islam or Lollardy.

Also, the loss of fervor from winning holy wars doesn't make sense to me. I guess it's their way of balancing fervor and having holy war cooldowns (an actual time cooldown would be better) but from a logical stance it doesn't make sense. Surely if you're winning holy wars against the infidels, you'd be more zealous and confident that God was on your side to keep going on the offensive? In actual history, it's not like the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs went 'ah well, we've taken Egypt and Persia, better have a rest, can't take Spain from the kuffar too soon, it would be unsportsmanlike'. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me that fervor decreases after WINNING.

I do think the devs have come up with some great ideas that could work well if they fine-tuned them but I get the feeling their attitude is just fan-service for the Reddit memelords with the most ridiculous events and options prioritised over gameplay that works properly.

 

[Korashy]

Play in other parts of the world.

I'm having a blast in Tibet and Africa.

Tried playing in Europe but crusades are garbage to defend against so screw that.

 

[Qoff]

I played it for 97 hours and I'm kind of waiting some patch too, some things on the game are very annoying right now.

 

[ZeRedleg]

Waiting for the patch as well

 

[Kerham]

I honestly see AI as doing a great job in warfare. Good with pathfinding, good with estimating the terrain and wether is advantegous or not. It's maybe overconfident especially about a war of attrition, but I haven't saw anything which could be called "terrible".

Also I haven't saw the AI "not doing matrilineal marriage". Plenty of queens and countesses around who would gladly reject a patrilineal marriage.

The one thing which I dislike completely is the convert religion option, available at a click, without any condition, at the expense of some Piety. You could be playing in the bottom of Siberia, you can convert freely to Orthodox without any kind of requirement. Something like owning a holding of said religion or bordering a ruler of that religion, at the very least.

 

[Qoff]

I honestly see AI as doing a great job in warfare. Good with pathfinding, good with estimating the terrain and wether is advantegous or not. It's maybe overconfident especially about a war of attrition, but I haven't saw anything which could be called "terrible".

Also I haven't saw the AI "not doing matrilineal marriage". Plenty of queens and countesses around who would gladly reject a patrilineal marriage.

The one thing which I dislike completely is the convert religion option, available at a click, without any condition, at the expense of some Piety. You could be playing in the bottom of Siberia, you can convert freely to Orthodox without any kind of requirement. Something like owning a holding of said religion or bordering a ruler of that religion, at the very least.

Sometimes I want to kill myself for rellying on AI allies, the enemy army attacks mine and we could wipe them together, but they preffer siege on the neighbour province.

 

[Valthis]

Play in other parts of the world.

I'm having a blast in Tibet and Africa.

Tried playing in Europe but crusades are garbage to defend against so screw that.

This isnt a good answer though. Some people don't like those regions. (I personally love them.) The point is we should not have to wait for patches to fix something that should have been caught in a QA, it doesn't take very long to realize that the AI doesnt upgrade baronies (which is actually in all spots in the world.) And that heresies rip apart Europe.

 

[Kerham]

Sometimes I want to kill myself for rellying on AI allies, the enemy army attacks mine and we could wipe them together, but they preffer siege on the neighbour province.

From EU4 I got the habit of following allies when we're in a war together. It might be that respective siege is the better option (for example they're sieging in terrain without defending bonuses). I had no war in which to have major complains, regularly guarding my armies which siege, etc. The one thing which I dislike is how sometimes my ally piles all its troops on my siege and give some attrition, but is a minor thing.

 

[yellowpigeonpoo]

I'm surprised nobody is mentioning the "endless wars" which you get dragged in to later on in the game.


Once levies and Men-at-arms reach a certain point multiple decade long conflicts become the norm...


As an example: I had a crusade called in on me and 40 years later of defending all my holdings and sieging down random counts all across europe + the papacy only brought me to 40% warscore in my favor