EU3 versus EU4: Things you miss (and things you don't)

[SirDifferential]

More random AI behavior. The time when Castille decided to invade me as Novgorod after I bullied their personal union pal was fantastic.

Hordes that were dangerous, except after Divine Wind.

Smaller states in the beginning of the game. This can be countered by installing some mod that moves the start date to EU3 start. Right now the world mostly goes the same way partly because the big nations are already so big that it takes a very unlikely turn of events to topple them.

Buildings not costing monarch points. I don't want magistrates back, though.

Population counters. I guess someone could mod the game to convert base tax into some arbitrary population counter that is something like (10000 * RNG(0.6,1.9)) * base_tax

Spies being available without ideas.

Other than that I like the way Paradox took EU with the fourth installment.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Pro EU3
1. Names spanning over vassals
2. Dynamic colony names
3. Sliders
4. Start date
5. More choices of advisors
Pro EU4
1. Not a ''click fest''
2. The free features that have been added over time to make the UI and game more user friendly.
3. Graphics are pretty good.
4. MP is a lot easier
5. I like the idea of fabricating claims as oppose to sitting there for sometimes years before you get a mission/COUR.
6. Steam WS

 

[Jango40]

How is EU4 less of a click fest than EU3?

 

[net.split]

I definitely prefer the new systems for ideas, economy, trade, and tech. I find monarch points a huge step forward over MTTH effects and magistrates, and I didn't like really anything about the slider system.

I miss the earlier start date and the ability for the big nations to counter each other more effectively. Spain, France, and GB tended to be rivals more in EU3, and they were more closely balanced. France rarely charged into the HRE; instead it would holy war and colonize. Claim fabrication is handy for the player, especially when you're small, but it makes the "bully nation" AIs that much more blobby.

 

[balmung60]

I miss that all building disappeared when you took a province. I think that would balance out EU4 to the better, and increase the importance of not neglecting your economy.

I'd make it like this; if you buy a province, or take one you have no core on, all buildings disapear. If you have a core on the province, half of the buildings, and eventual manufactories, are kept when you conquer it.

We had that at EU4 start, and it was terrible. Trade goods were worthless because nothing drove their demand because all of the buildings were getting destroyed and in relatively short order, pretty much no province had anything other than forts (the only buildings spared from the destruction).

I miss four things from EU3:
(1) Sliders
(2) The ability to change NIs
(3) Magistrates
(4) Ruler stats that directly impact the country

Well, we're getting #2 in the next patch (or the DLC, not certain which), since it'll become possible to remove idea groups.

 

[Krajzen]

What i miss from EU3
- more diversified advisors, I mean you could have an Artist +3 or Artist +18
- really dangerous inflation
- completely free choice of Ideas
- much more Espionage options
- real population indicators
- technological progress based on economy!!

What i don't miss from EU3!
- graphics and interface, current id so cute...

- goddamn sliders. I hated them so much. Takes you 30 years to move slider slightly aaaand you get random event and it goes back. Especially infuriating when dealing with decisions requiring particular levels of sliders. Maybe it was kinda realistic but definitely not fun.
- provincial decisions. Most pointless thing ever.
- pre HTTT papacy and hre, very passive
- lack of monarch points, some people criticize them but imo they fill some significant void.
- much, much less developed idea groups AND national ideas

- trade'system, I always thought it was annoying and immersion - breaking. 90% of world had literally no trade income without trade ideas, good merchant advisors or events. It felt like minigame instead of beautiful global trade streams of eu4. Not to
mention frustrating percentage chances and few merchant countries' bastards blocking all your tradeports.

- way too bad subsaharan and american tech groups making these guys not difficult but almost impossible to play. Also: BORING Africa and America.

- hit-or-miss religious conversion, if I remember properly.
- heavily limited menu world map
- lack of coalitions, yeah I know they can be annoying but without them world wars and blob hunts were so limited
- random espionage, colonization and conversion!
- too many stability hits, whatever you do you lower this damn stability
- much more boring technological progress' like poor government techs where half of techs were blank
- lack of many nice utilities

- ridiculously incompetent Ottoman AI, by the way why it was so bad? Developers even specifically pointed at that improvement in EU4, so they knew something was wrong here

 

[grandadmiralbob]

How is EU4 less of a click fest than EU3?

Improving relations and stuff like that which you had to click ''send XXXX'' several times to do something.
Although I did like the fact that in eu3, it wasn't a guarantee as to an acceptance of vassalage, call to arms, etc.

 

[Emre Yigit]

How is EU4 less of a click fest than EU3?

And trade also springs to mind.

 

[Jango40]

And trade also springs to mind.

Autosend.

 

[jdrou]

No, I am not saying that. What I said was:
(4) Ruler stats that directly impact the country

i.e. this stuff:

monarch_adm = {
	merchant_cost = -0.05				#5% decrease for each step
	merchant_placement_chance = 0.03	#3% for each skill-level.
	merchant_compete_chance = 0.01		#1% for each skill-level.
	build_cost = -0.01					#1% cheaper construction for each skill level.
	colonist_placement_chance = 0.05	#5% for each ADM (5-45)
	missionary_placement_chance = 0.007	# for each ADM
	stability_investment = 2			#2$ for each ADM
	government_tech_investment = 1
	production_tech_investment = 1
	trade_tech_investment = 1
	war_exhaustion = -0.016				#about 1/12 decrease each month with an ADM 5
	bureaucrats_influence = 0.5			# Changed from 1
}

monarch_dip = {
	badboy = -0.1						#reduce by about 1 every 2 years with average skill.
	badboy_limit = 1					#each increases by 1
	diplomats = 0.3						#0.3 for each skilllevel
	max_war_exhaustion = -0.11			#-0.11 for each skilllevel.. so a skill 9 reduces max by 1.
	spy_efficiency = 0.01				#5% for each skill level
	enuchs_influence = 0.5				# Changed from 1
}

monarch_mil = {
	land_morale = 0.1					#0.1 for each skill-level
	naval_morale = 0.1					#0.1 for each skill-level
	land_tech_investment = 1
	naval_tech_investment = 1
	temples_influence = 0.5				# Changed from 1
}

Basically all the effects that were replaced by monarch points (which are really kind of mis-named since typically most points come from other sources).

 

[Beagá]

Not really.

EU 3 modifiers were active ALL the time. The gameplay effect is quite significant. Also, many events in EU 4 don´t rely on monarch stats.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

i.e. this stuff:
[...]
Basically all the effects that were replaced by monarch points (which are really kind of mis-named since typically most points come from other sources).

Yes, these effects. No, they were not replaced by MPs.
It is not like you can't mod these back in. I did that with my BGA mod - all you need is a triggered modifier. Still, I missed them in the base game.

 

[brifbates]

Autosend.

Which failed at getting full monopolies because it wouldn't send more once you had 6 merchants present. Anything beyond that you had to do by hand, i.e a click-fest...

 

[komspace2_]

Point taken - bursts of three could occasionally be more useful than autosend.



No, I'm talking about every slider apart from Centralization. And Naval was a choice, even if weaker than Land in most cases - it had its niche, and it still was the second most obvious choice among the sliders. Still again, it doesn't invalidate the system, just its balancing; as it was said, almost every mod made the sliders into something quite exceptional (D&T and MM come to mind).

Well, in multiplayer (the only environment where choices really matter) the preferred slider setup was obvious:
centralization
aristocracy (military bonus beats trade)
free subjects (tech)
innovative (tech)
free trade (your example of a colonial nation is nice in theory, but really doesn't work out like that - almost all good decisions are tied to free trade and I'll rule your CoTs and the ROTW's)
land or naval (depending on national focus)
quality (discipline decides wars)

The sliders were badly balanced but that doesn't mean that they have to be. They could easily adapted and be used to portray nations far better than this arbitrary and inflexible UNI-system ever could (the old setup gave you 214358881 different combinations). What they should have done is to make the sliders matter more, so as to increase the unique flavors. Did I mention I passionately hate the MP system and the UNIs?

One improvement over EU3 is that magistrates used to be the single most important ressource of a competitive game and you had to farm them, i. e. aquire countless useless vassals everywhere and include them into your sphere of interest. I'm glad that that stupid minigame is gone.

 

[Incompetent]

I miss the coring/overextension system from EU3. It was pretty basic, but it at least created some kind of distinction between long-established provinces and peripheral conquests that could easily be lost again. The EU4 system of 'core every single province, or else' doesn't really fit with what I think of as a 'core' province, and it creates a silly situation where after about 5 years in charge of a province you took with no real justification, the everyone treats that province as if it's been part of your country for centuries. I'm not a fan of the current claim system either - fabricating should be mainly a last-resort CB like it is in CK2 (carpet fabrication as standard procedure is just wrong on so many levels), and claims arising from creating a nation should be much longer-lasting and/or refreshable (maybe they could give a special 'de jure realm' CB like in CK2, and every time you use it, any remaining claims on that 'kingdom' have their timers refreshed).

Hopefully the 'instant homeland' issue will be rectified somewhat in Art of War with the new province autonomy stat.

There are lots of things I prefer in EU4, though. One of the big ones is trade. For all its flaws, I find the trade system in EU4 far more satisfying than in any of the previous EU games. Discrete influence-jostling games are an OK system to use in a board game (where there are relatively few 'turns', so flipping a merchant is a big deal), but in a real-time computer game, it's much better to have something more 'flowing', both in time and space.

 

[Emre Yigit]

Autosend.

Not if you wanted to keep absolute dominance.

 

[grommile]

I'm not a fan of the current claim system either - fabricating should be mainly a last-resort CB like it is in CK2 (carpet fabrication as standard procedure is just wrong on so many levels),

Remove claim fabrication, and Europe turns into a lovefest.

 

[Arrowfiend]

Although it didn't have an effect on the game, I miss seeing the population of a province. Sure, it is roughly represented by base tax, but it doesn't match up all the time.

I don't miss the sliders and the cluttered interface.

I do miss buildings costing just ducats. I'd be fine if vanilla EU4 handled buildings like the Veritas et Fortitudo mod, where buildings only cost a single monarch point but have a slightly higher ducat cost. I think that works way better.

 

[rekindledflame]

Things from Eu3 I miss:

minting ducats
inflation that mattered
being able to engage in meaningful 'espionage' without investing in an idea line
more diversity in advisors
More diverse outcomes in 1821 (the world map in 1821 in Eu4 is often very similar in area's the player does not interfere)
Economy being tied to Technology
High military tradition had more impact on the leader you recruited (this may be confirmation bias)
I miss the randomness of culture conversions
The ability for a vassal to say 'screw you' if you wanted to diploannex them (although at times this was incredibly frustrating)
The infamy system (it was less complicated and I prefer it over the AE mechanics as it spelled out exactly how much infamy you would accrue)

Things I don't miss

Colonize horde mechanics
Religion giving colonists
Envoys being treated as a resource
Having to manually send a colonist each time you accrued one and the fail/succeed mechanic of such
The mess that was Japan (though Eu4 has had many bugs in this regard as well)
A huge disparity between tech (still exists, but it's not near as bad in Eu4)
Having to 'westernize' multiple times (ie. chinese to muslim then to Western)
Magistrates (I know some favour this now, however the Eu3 forum was always rife with threads complaining how there were never enough etc cause they were used for damn near everything)
Huge cascading alliances (especially in Divine Wind)
Relations were bi-directional
Could not repay loans ahead of time
Had monthly and yearly income (unnecessary convolution)
Core times taking 50 years (although OE in Eu3 was a joke so it wasn't a big deal)

As far as the sliders, *shrugs* I don't know, I rather enjoy the idea system, outside of National idea's which makes a lot of game play predetermined imo.

 

[Incompetent]

Remove claim fabrication, and Europe turns into a lovefest.

It wouldn't if we had more circumstantial CBs. For example, I think you should pretty much always be able to get a CB on countries that have rivalled you, and the colonialism CB needs to be much more broadly defined to take into account colonial regions. (For instance, if I have a CN in Brazil and France puts a colony next to it, then France is clearly interfering in 'my turf' just as much as if we had two colonies next to each other.)

Fabricated claim is not a real CB, it's just a war of aggression with a thin coating of propaganda so your people don't revolt.