Game gets too easy after 1st 100 years.

[iheady]

[Edit: adding income from main countries]
[2nd Edit: ok guys u got a point, but then we can apply same rule for France, England or Portugal, and look at their economy... All in Europe, all lucky nations, all best techno group, all in very good situations this game]

Hi all, this is my 1st post in this forum,

so after playing EU4 when it was released I stoppped it till act of war came out and I decided to give Gelre a try and form the Netherlands. I allied France and beated Austria little by little with no trouble(they had inherited Borgogne). Now its 1592 and I am expanding in the rest of Dutch and some German region provinces while I colonise Cote de Ivory, Caribe and Canada,

So far so good right?

Well my problem is that I triple everybody elses income , I have 170 ships, and guess what, went into war against Portugal, who never had a real war and has territories in half america and Afrika, including whole Morocco(always defeated Morocco easily allied with Castilla) and they had 35 ships!! My trade node (Anterpen or something-Dutch one)where I have 90% trade power generates 200 gold/month while Lübeck generates 50. I control almost every single trade node I have discovered and I dont even need a regular army, I have so much money that I just hire mercenaries all day. I did no savescum no cheats. I am playing in hard. I started with a one province nation. Ok I understand Austria and other nations around me (being the Human player) can be behind in the game now, cuz AI cant match you when it comes to war, but seriously, Portugal which had time to dominate the world without almost going in real wars, they have 200k overseas provinces and they have 35 boats? Lübeck is worth 50gold while "Antrepen" is 200g? I am also the country with more ideas and several times I had to expend MP at 999 with +7 years of advantage.

So the point is that in hard difficulty and being at constant war and anexing folks all around Gelre, u still get infinite gold income, all technos advanced, all provinces have all buildings, most trade power, most ships etc etc and AI countries who have been, lets use a League of Legends term "AFK farming all game" cant even build 40 boats? I got southafrika and around from Portugal in my 1st war against them for free...

I have seen threads and vids on youtube about people conquering the whole world etc. Ok I can see that that is complicated, but doesnt look interesting to me. If I want to be a bit realistic and form The Netherlands, get the european spots they hold and expand colonially, cant I get real opponents from AI? All i had to do this game was allying France>profit. Now I leave my beloved Low Countries/Austrian wars and find that other europeans are poor and have no real fleets(even having possesions all around the globe) and no army I cant beat hiring mercenaries with my 14k treasury.

In EU4 no expansion I played once with Portugal and Mecklemburg(Formed Germany) Didnt finish any of the games, being the Germany formation one the more interesting and long. In both games happened exactly the same, I ended up being the one with most incoming by very very far(imagine how much did I have to fight and use resources to form Germany, and still left everybody else long behind). Now I came to a point in my Dutch game where I can just get w.e I want.

What do u think about this difficulty thing?
Suggestion to make the Netherlands game insteresting again guys?
Any MOD you know adds AI power?
I am playing with all expansion and extended experience MOD
And the last question! If I put AI advantage, im ok with them getting buff in admind and diplo, but will they defeat me in a 5k(me) vs 3k(AI) fight? That would look senseless.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

EDIT:

Yes Cataphract, It is about snowballing, but it looks like AI cant not do that lol, its unreal.

 

[FloatingOrb]

it's the opposite for me if I am playing a challenging start (ie not a lucky nation). The easy land is usually gone by 1550 and now you have to dance around the big boys.

 

[Trensicourt]

The reason why this game is so easy after the first 100 years is because there are no Great Power coalitions and Great Powers don't check the power of other Great Powers. In addition, there is no real sphere of influence like in Victoria 2. Basically it means that no one can stop a player if that player doesn't smack a bee hive of nations.

My suggestion on this is to add a proper Sphere of Influence that does not take up relationships, but rather "influence points". The more influence you have on a country, the more you control that country. However, it also brings some responsibility. For example, if you don't enforce peace on a country whose invading a country with your influence points, you lose all your influence in that country. Naturally, the stronger a country is, the more points it gains. In addition, I believe the number of influence points gain can be increased depending on how much power projection points a nation has.

Next suggestion is a Call to arms Coalition. This can only be formed against a Great Power Nation by a lesser power. This coalition takes up 1 relationship slot, but all participants in that coalition become allies in a war if one of its members are attacked in a defensive war and participants get negative modifiers if there is internal conflict within the coalition.

 

[Cataphract887]

Its the snowball nature of the game. Building up and investing power and wealth(usually in the form of territorial acquisitions) allows you to gain even more power and wealth. If you do this faster than the AI, which is easy, you soon become very powerful, soon depending on how strong your starting nation was. Strangely it seems EU4 is the most susceptible to this compared to older versions despite having on the face of it, the toughest anti-snowball mechanics yet(overextension).

The real problem is aggressive expansion is entirely reactive. It only responds to certain events and a super power nation sitting still accrues no enemies whatsoever. The only threat is another superpower snowballing faster than you.

Edit:i missed your questions on how to buff AI.

On the options screen where you can choose Ai bonuses, human bonuses, or none, mouse over the word ''bonus'' to see a list of benefits. None of them directly increase AI troop combat capability so you can safely turn this on without getting cheated in combat. One thing i used to do in older EU is just give an underperforming AI some benefits by editing the savegame file and giving say England 100k gold so they could actually afford things, or whatever benefits make sense to you. I really wish there was an AI mod but i havnt seen one really in the mods forum or steam workshop. One edit i tried on my game was to vastly increase the rate at which AI declares war, especially on weaker targets(editing defines.lua required). Combining this with AI bonuses=on would be quite interesting for my next game i think...

 

[IIWW]

suggestion for netherlands to become more interesting is basically fix (since most of ppl think it's screwed up) lower the downstream propagation of TP. Same for Portugal, and anyone who has easy acces to end-node (english channel being the richest one by far). If Yuo want difficult game, try harder nation, especially ROTW. It may still be too easy for You, but definatelly it's not right to say that game is easy after playing a nations which gain the most out of broken mechanism.
And 5k vs 3k is a battle that can go both ways, generally the smaller the fight is, the more random it gets, same as throwing coin 4 times can give You 4 tail, but the closer You get to infinity, the closer You get to 50:50. Also, there are ton's of modifiers, Brandenburg/Prussia can easily beat 2x as big Russian army late game.

 

[Pornek]

Might be that Portugal was at war recently and lost their fleet in a battle.

You play in the richest area in Europe, you are in the best tech group, youre inside the HRE and you also allied France and used them as attack dog. You basically gave yourself the best starting conditions.

If this isnt ironman, how about you save and declare on France ?
Your 14k will useless, your fleet will be useless and you will get stomped in a matter of seconds. France will pour soldiers in your country until you cant recruit any new units.

This actually happend in my historical Netherlands game, because it is almost certain they will break the alliance when they get the India mission. The "wants your province" modifier will be high enough that re-allying them wont happen.

 

[Oryxslayer]

You are sitting in the most op end trade node currently in the game. It frequently hits over 100 ducats before 1550, and then just keeps on growing. Even an opm can rake in the ducats with that massive potential on your doorstep. However, this game does get easy over time, and most player blobs hit this point around 1650. Try playing a nation like taberstan or aztec, the tipping point comes later and the process is harder. Heck, your post never even mentioned the ROTW, which is a whole other beast when compared to europe.

Oh, and you allied france, which is effectively the "I win" button in this game. Don't complain the game is to easy, when one has a french allience. One of the main reasons why I seek to disable/check france each game.

 

[marmot01]

I was also to not to complain the game is too easy/uninteresting when the only thing I needed to do as England was sit in my island, upgrade buildings and build fleets So much fun...

 

[iheady]

Thanks Cataphract i may give big nations 100k money too lol, and lets see if I get a full European map of provinces building stuff.

Yes guys ofc im in the good spot of the world, but so does rest of Europe, France is not building anything? Hansa is allied to me too, they are getting 27gold from trade...
The point is that AI doesnt invest their money in developing their economies, being them in Europe too and all. As I said Portugal had no more wars than vs Morocco and they won everything, still they dont boom their economy...

Trensicourt, that would be good and would do the game even more interesting but still need to make AI more agressive economically speaking.

 

[gagenater]

Play with AI bonuses on. Avoid 'gamey' exploits 'ex. Feeding vassels'

 

[WeissRaben]

Can you remember the times during development when the devs kept saying they would avoid war-only, snowballing and such? Good times. A pity those words remained in development and never got to the game.

 

[Freudia]

Can you remember the times during development when the devs kept saying they would avoid war-only, snowballing and such? Good times. A pity those words remained in development and never got to the game.

I wasn't around for development period of this game, but what did players do in previous iterations of the game (ie EU3)? Judging by what I've seen and heard, all you did back then was war and snowball too.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

I'd trying playing as another country beside the Netherlands. Tunisia, Byzantium, Poland, Golden Horde, Japanese Daiymo, etc. all provide interesting challenges.

The other question is what your goal is? Unlike other games, there's no one way to "win." So you have to set other goals or try the achievements for canned goals to pursue.

 

[slv]

I wasn't around for development period of this game, but what did players do in previous iterations of the game (ie EU3)? Judging by what I've seen and heard, all you did back then was war and snowball too.

EU3 and EU2 snowball was harder because

1.You don't have "give me casus belli" (fabricate claim) button
2.To make something a core you have to wait 50 years. Don't remember corrrectly, but I think that integrating vassals was not giving cores as well.
3.In EU4 when you "snowball" you start getting 100% trade income from the whole word. In EU3/2 you can't reliably get more than 25% of the trade income even if you snowball.
4.It looks like badboy system was much better in handling the anti-snowball theme than coalitions.

 

[WeissRaben]

I wasn't around for development period of this game, but what did players do in previous iterations of the game (ie EU3)? Judging by what I've seen and heard, all you did back then was war and snowball too.

EU3 and EU2 snowball was harder because

1.You don't have "give me casus belli" (fabricate claim) button
2.To make something a core you have to wait 50 years. Don't remember corrrectly, but I think that integrating vassals was not giving cores as well.
3.In EU4 when you "snowball" you start getting 100% trade income from the whole word. In EU3/2 you can't reliably get more than 25% of the trade income even if you snowball.
4.It looks like badboy system was much better in handling the anti-snowball theme than coalitions.

Moreover, I would add that the base game for EU3 is seven years old (six when EU4 came out). "But that's what happened in a game from six years ago, too" shouldn't really be a compelling argument.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

EU3 got really boring late game because Castile would blob North Africa and overseas and Ottoman and Moscovy would blob into India/Asia.

 

[lordelenath]

I'd trying playing as another country beside the Netherlands. Tunisia, Byzantium, Poland, Golden Horde, Japanese Daiymo, etc. all provide interesting challenges.

The other question is what your goal is? Unlike other games, there's no one way to "win." So you have to set other goals or try the achievements for canned goals to pursue.

While some of these are certainly interesting (and I have done most) it doesn't make them a challenge. If you want for a more difficult game Poland is probably not the way to go. And even all the others aren't really difficult by any stretch. If you want to stay in Europe, try OPMs outside the HRE (e.g. The Knights, Cyprus, Navarra or vassal/PU minors). If you're just looking for a challenge the ROTW would probably be better. At the end of the day however, every nation will become easy some time into the game since it's easy to play a lot more efficient than the AI. Depending with whom you start it takes 50-200 years to become unbeatable. The only way to avoid that is to set strict self restrictions and/or house rules.

 

[Freudia]

Moreover, I would add that the base game for EU3 is seven years old (six when EU4 came out). "But that's what happened in a game from six years ago, too" shouldn't really be a compelling argument.

I'm not really saying it's an argument against it, just that I'm curious people find a problem with this but then turn around and praise EU3 as some holy grail of strategy games when it has mostly the same problems.

Also this is all spoken from the mindset of someone who only reads about the game based on what others have said about it. I've zero experience in actually playing it, so maybe it actually had content outside of invading people to death.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

Depending with whom you start it takes 50-200 years to become unbeatable.

If you play as Songhai, Aztec, Cherokee, etc., you will still be at a big disadvantage in the mid 1600s. Maybe by 1800 you can dominate the world but not always depending how the European powers have progressed.

 

[lordelenath]

If you play as Songhai, Aztec, Cherokee, etc., you will still be at a big disadvantage in the mid 1600s. Maybe by 1800 you can dominate the world but not always depending how the European powers have progressed.

In 1.7 by 1650 I had conquered half of Iberia as the Aztecs. Haven't done these in 1.8 yet and they've certainly become harder, granted. But you'll certainly be at a point in 1650 that will allow you to beat any European super power, if you want to.