Bigger nations must have more problems!

[iquabakaner]

I used to read every event 500 hours in, after 2500 hours I click on most popups decisions instantly having already been faced with the same choices countless times. I am no longer as "immersed" in this game from having played it too much.

Neither do I read any of the events anymore. Glad you do admit the game fails in being immersive after the first few playthroughs.

 

[bly08]

I'm still very much immersed in the mechanics aspect. There's only so much flavor that can be introduced with every DLC.

 

[Magnificent Genius]

Color me confused then. Why is the WC achievement fulfilled by such a small percentage of the player base yet it seems this forum is filled with players who find it too easy?

Because I get bored, or drunk, or a patch comes out before I finish. I've come close three separate times, and had at least a half a dozen other runs where I probably could have succeeded, but sadly I lack dedication. Drinking is the number one cause of failed WC for me.

 

[Badesumofu]

Perhaps but I see no reason why Eu4 shouldn't change to cater to my needs, After all the people who feel the way I do are many and the powergamers few.

Take that thought to its logical conclusion and every game ever made becomes Candy Crush Saga.

Personally I would hate to see a hypothetical Victoria 3 turn out to be Map Painting Simulator 2018, just as I would hate to see EU4 as it currently is gutted to make way for the totally different game that the anti-blobbing crowd wish it was.

If you look at the anti-WC posters in this and similar threads, they are all proposing solutions for problems that they have absolutely no understanding of. Either that or their real problem is that they find the way other players play offensive or want EU4 to be a totally different game. Some are even so delusional as to think that the game isn't designed with WC in mind.

What is the point of even trying to have a meaningful discussion with such posters?

 

[bly08]

Because I get bored, or drunk, or a patch comes out before I finish. I've come close three separate times, and had at least a half a dozen other runs where I probably could have succeeded, but sadly I lack dedication. Drinking is the number one cause of failed WC for me.

During my first WC attempt I had 20k+ development as the Ottomans in late 1780s. I thought it would be an easy finish but ended up a few provinces short. Even if I did finish there was no part of me that could possibly think "this is a piece of a cake, it should be more challenging." I have no idea how that thought could enter anyone's head while having undergone the same experience.

 

[FrogCrusher]

And don't forget that El Dorado is very popular with custom nations and random new world. According to a Dev in 2015 or so, custom are even the most play nations!
Sorry for the disappointment but player base seems to be less interesting by historical accuracy than you think...

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

I honestly see WC as more of a tedium than a challenge if you pick the Ottomans. I could try a WC as them again if I had the willpower to bother with the micro.

There are two ways to make taller play more tempting, which have both been stated.

1. Introduce more peace-time mechanics
Reasonable enough, taller players don't blob much, hence this will make tall play more interesting. Vicky 2 is an excellent game and with more depth than most, if not all of Paradox's titles. Part of which are the peace-time mechanics. In EU4 it is often very risky not to expand, unless you are in the HRE

2. Nerf blobbing.
Main reason why there is so much blobbing late game is because of the game granting you freebies. Admin Efficiency, Absolutism, Imperialism CB. None have any real drawbacks. By making blobbing less viable people will be more interested in playing tall, or will expand in a more reasonable manner.

Blobbers have a problem with both approaches, from what I see, mainly out of preference

And don't forget that El Dorado is very popular with custom nations and random new world. According to a Dev in 2015 or so, custom are even the most play nations!
Sorry for the disappointment but player base seems to be less interesting by historical accuracy than you think...

Doesn't have to be so. I assume a lot of these custom nations are placed so they don't interfere with Europe(I know Greenland is a popular spot)

 

[bbqftw]

my goldfish also has come pretty close to a world conquest and quit due to boredom

it is ok, meanwhile my dog has obtained the three mountains, meaning he is more qualified than 80% of the posters in this thread to comment on game mechanics.

he appears to be complaining that this game is not very friendly to color blind players.

Again you have a narrow minded view of what dedicated players are.

yeah I recently taught my goldfish to click the development edict whenever he clicks the hammer or paper or sword button. He's equally as competent as world conquering dog to post about game mechanics unfortunately I don't speak fish so cannot translate

 

[bly08]

Blobbers have a problem with both approaches, from what I see, mainly out of preference

Yes, I prefer to not have the blobbing mechanics changed based on suggestions by players who don't understand how it works. I would also prefer if you can read and think about the pages and pages of comments targeted at your suggestions instead of plugging your ears and spamming the same opinions over and over.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

Yes, I prefer to not have the blobbing mechanics changed based on suggestions by players who don't understand how it works. I would also prefer if you can read and think about the pages and pages of comments targeted at your suggestions instead of plugging your ears and spamming the same opinions over and over.

A lot of you did that exact thing. TheMeInTeam admitted to not bothering reading our suggestions. I actually read all the posts and this is the conclusion I came to.

 

[bly08]

Because they're terrible and not even he has the patience. Better yet, why not spam the suggestions forum instead of this one?

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

Because they're terrible and not even he has the patience. Better yet, why not spam the suggestions forum instead of this one?

Terrible because it nerfs your favourite playstyle.
I wasn't the one who started this thread.

Talk to ya in a couple of hours, test is starting.

 

[inreadible]

Ok, anti-blobbing crowd, explain this to me:

Do you actually want more challenge or do you want the game to be easier for your playstyle? It seems to me that certain people claim they do not want to blob and they'd like to see blobbing become more challenging by introducing mechanics that hurt large nations. If you do not want to play a large nation how would this make your game any more challenging? Ah, the actual reason is that you got your ass kicked by a larger AI nation so you want them nerfed and actually make the game easier for you.

This whole thread started by OP's frustration of huge AI empires that he couldn't handle. Below a few comments that seem more like frustration against AI than player blobbing:

So how in every game, I see a giant Ottoman or Ming or whatever nation getting bigger and bigger without any trouble?

In a recent game versus an ottoman empire that spanned from Austria-Poland to Ethiopia, I was faced with 180 regiments of Mercs, 200k manpower and 250k armies

The problem is how you can have (or the Bot) a huge multi-ethnic empire and still be as stable as Switzerland. It remove the challenge for the more casual play at some point and push people to color paint the map with few to none consequences.

Thats what people are asking for. That blobs in eu4 still face a challenge. Preferably not by having the AI blob like crazy, too. That would destroy a lot of eu4 quasi historical flavor when all minors are gone by 1530.
So instead "high level" (blob) nations need a new challenge.

Then there are the great solutions:

Meanwhile, the real challenge of a big Empire should be from the inside, not from the outside. It should be something that we have at least an echo of in the game, be it like a proposed a Stability cost link to the number of province, an autonomy floor based on the distance from the capital or a global unrest scaling with the number of dev... Or even random event that could scrap the game of people that do not care about the stability of their country and only want to conquer as fast as possible.

Why not a random event that ends the game because an asteroid hit Earth.

I remember somewhere someone mentioning that inflation should increase the bigger amount of provinces you have. Which, I guess, it could make some kind of sense to a certain point.

Punishing larger nations, but as you don't like to blob the punishment wouldn't apply to you.

Hell, I do not ask for the moon here. I simply want a link between the size and the stability. Be it 1% stability cost per province. Just to ''feel'' that it makes sense.

Things like Global Unrest, Stability cost, Inflation, Autonomy that could be link to the size of the empire aren't affected by it.

Again, punishing the other nations but not yours because you don't like to blob, right?

Something that made me think. Whenever a new monarch takes over, the stability drop will be 1 plus a certain value depending on which attributes the heir has lower than the dying king, so it could go from a 1 to 4 drop (or 2 to 5 if he was a general).

More RNG stab hits, seriously?

My proposal is to nerf late-game blobbing. The reason why we see such massive spikes in dev is due to things like Admin Efficiency and Absolutism, which are all plus and no minus(barring the disaster, but it is manageable).

Nerfing Admin Efficiency and Absolutism would only make end game slower, not harder. And it would affect the AI as much, if not more, as the player and wouldn't add any more challenge.

One idea that I saw somewhere else was about Culture. Adding a better mechanics where too many unaccepted culture could, for example, increase inflation/ corruption/ cause random event that convert the culture of other province. And in opposition, having low unaccepted culture could provoke event that switch their culture to your main culture, for example.

More random events because clicking one of two options is a great country management simulator.

The current rebel mechanic spawns only rebel stacks that are pretty much always inferior to your troops, and is simply too easy to deal with, and also too easy to avoid in the first place.

Yet again, if don't like to blob, you will hardly get any rebels. Even if they were to be buffed it would mostly hurt the larger AI nations and not you with your all-accepted culture states.

You have rebels on recently conquered territories, you have occasional event spawned rebels, all who simply cared about a small area with extremely predictable (and lame) movement. but nothing that really threaten your "heartland" like in CK2, where you could basically have more than half of your country turned against you, with concentrated troops similar to your size, that works like an independent country.

Yes, I would really like to play for hours to build a nation and then my ruler dies and my country splits and it's time to play whack-a-mole with the rebels.

edit: You can respectfully disagree as much as you like but if you do not address my points it just proves that you are not frustrated with blobbing or that the game lacks challenge, you have just been beaten by AI.

 

[TheDungen]

Take that thought to its logical conclusion and every game ever made becomes Candy Crush Saga.

That's an interesting point oh wait no it's not I already pointed out several pages ago that

Any idea taken to it's logical extreme fails.

And that's what you are doing it's not the logical conclusion it is the logical extreme. And is very much not a logical conclusion just a strawman argument.
Everything is a balancing act, an optimisation problem. I could turn the tables and do a blobbing strawman but first of it's a stupid way to argue and secondly there game is at a state where the AI could do world conquest if you gave it acess to the continue button I really don't think I could come up with a worse strawman.

What is the point of even trying to have a meaningful discussion with such posters?

Then stop replying to them and let them speak their mind without jumping down their throat.

During my first WC attempt I had 20k+ development as the Ottomans in late 1780s. I thought it would be an easy finish but ended up a few provinces short. Even if I did finish there was no part of me that could possibly think "this is a piece of a cake, it should be more challenging." I have no idea how that thought could enter anyone's head while having undergone the same experience.

So you just pressed continue and finished I assume? That's what I would have done, and that's really my problem with WC and the game in general WC is not hard the only thing that make sit hard is the time limit, remove the time limit and the AI will eventually succeed in doing it. WC should be difficult even without a time limit. Reality never had a time limit but guess what no one has conquered the world anyway (though the British came close but that's late Vic2 era).
I have never enjoyed time trails in any game I have ever played, the concept of time running out is a constant reminder that "it's just a game".

As for being impressed with the achievement of managing things like WC before 1600, no not any more than I am impressed with the 15 minute Legend Of Zelda Ocarina of time playthrough using the deku tree exploit to skip to the last boss. Why would I be impressed with someone's ability avoid playing the game and turning what remains of it into a mechanical chore? If you like that sort of thing fine but most people don't.

So here's my suggestion take away the time limit on the achievements and make it actually difficult to achieve not just difficult because of the clock. You lot will be able to try to one up each other wit the quickest time anyway but this way they send the message that the game is not about the time trail.

 

[bly08]

As for being impressed with the achievement of managing things like WC before 1600, no not any more than I am impressed with the 15 minute Legend Of Zelda Ocarina of time playthrough using the deku tree exploit to skip to the last boss. Why would I be impressed with someone's ability avoid playing the game and turning what remains of it into a mechanical chore? If you like that sort of thing fine but most people don't.

Your ignorance is truly astounding.

 

[TheDungen]

Your ignorance is truly astounding.

Ad hoiminem is the last resort of those who have no good reply.

Please do tell me why skipping the game is impressive. Avoiding mechanics avoiding content, ofcourse everything that could be added seems like a chore to you if it means that is just more stuff you are trying to circumvent but some of us want a game to play not just to beat.

 

[bly08]

Ad hoiminem is the last resort of those who have no good reply.

Please do tell me why skipping the game is impressive. Avoiding mechanics avoiding content, ofcourse everything that could be added seems like a chore to you if it means that is just more stuff you are trying to circumvent but some of us want a game to play not just to beat.

You don't have to be impressed by fast WCs but comparing them to a Zelda exploit is insulting. Even if it's hyperbole, you don't seem to understand what historical strategy games are. The flavor is a mask for mechanics that can be optimized. You can have more flavor without mindlessly altering core mechanics. I honestly do not understand why you can't just put more time into the game and learn at least how it works on a fundamental level before forming strong opinions about how everything should be changed.

 

[bly08]

Ok, anti-blobbing crowd, explain this to me:

Do you actually want more challenge or do you want the game to be easier for your playstyle? It seems to me that certain people claim they do not want to blob and they'd like to see blobbing become more challenging by introducing mechanics that hurt large nations. If you do not want to play a large nation how would this make your game any more challenging? Ah, the actual reason is that you got your ass kicked by a larger AI nation so you want them nerfed and actually make the game easier for you.

This whole thread started by OP's frustration of huge AI empires that he couldn't handle. Below a few comments that seem more like frustration against AI than player blobbing:









Then there are the great solutions:

Why not a random event that ends the game because an asteroid hit Earth.


Punishing larger nations, but as you don't like to blob the punishment wouldn't apply to you.




Again, punishing the other nations but not yours because you don't like to blob, right?


More RNG stab hits, seriously?


Nerfing Admin Efficiency and Absolutism would only make end game slower, not harder. And it would affect the AI as much, if not more, as the player and wouldn't add any more challenge.


More random events because clicking one of two options is a great country management simulator.


Yet again, if don't like to blob, you will hardly get any rebels. Even if they were to be buffed it would mostly hurt the larger AI nations and not you with your all-accepted culture states.


Yes, I would really like to play for hours to build a nation and then my ruler dies and my country splits and it's time to play whack-a-mole with the rebels.

The logic is that a 2k dev Ottoman Empire is too threatening but WCs are not challenging enough. It's amazing that all of this even needs to be pointed out.

 

[TheDungen]

You don't have to be impressed by fast WCs but comparing them to a Zelda exploit is insulting. Even if it's hyperbole, you don't seem to understand what historical strategy games are. The flavor is a mask for mechanics that can be optimized. You can have more flavor without mindlessly altering core mechanics. I honestly do not understand why you can't just put more time into the game and learn at least how it works on a fundamental level before forming strong opinions about how everything should be changed.

You mean how you play them. I know full well what they are and have my own ideas what they should be. As you lot have pointed out oh so many times we all play these games differently and you know what I have a fair amount of respect for the 15 minutes zelda run, at least he realizes that it's mostly for fun, he never goes on about that that's how the game is supposed to be played when he finds glitches and exploits.

Look if you don't want to actually play the game that is up to you I am sure you'll find new exploits to avoid doing it but don't come here and complain when we ask for more interesting mechanics, just because you feel it's a chore to circumvent them.

 

[bly08]

You mean how you play them. I know full well what they are and have my own ideas what they should be. As you lot have pointed out oh so many times we all play these games differently and you know what I have a fair amount of respect for the 15 minutes zelda run, at least he realizes that it's mostly for fun, he never goes on about that that's how the game is supposed to be played when he finds glitches and exploits.

Look if you don't want to actually play the game that is up to you I am sure you'll find new exploits to avoid doing it but don't come here and complain when we ask for more interesting mechanics, just because you feel it's a chore to circumvent them.

Please find one post in this entire thread that has said or implied that every game should end in a WC, or that "casual" play should be nerfed. I think I can speak for the "blobbing crowd" by saying that we don't give a shit about how casuals play this game. Yet you seem to be obsessed with WCs.

It's also extremely ignorant to think that fast WCs are mostly the result of exploits that are not working as designed. Note that I am calling you ignorant with respect to your understanding of EU4. You may be a very bright person otherwise.

If you find a 2k dev Ottomans to be too much trouble, make a thread, post screenshots of your situation and people will help, myself included. The game shouldn't be changed just because you don't feel like learning to overcome perfectly surmountable obstacles.