Has Some of the Fun Gone Out of This Game?

[D-A-C]

Hey guys.

I find that I perpetually start games of EUIV and never finish them anymore and have found myself wondering recently if some of the the tweaks and additions over time have actually sucked some of the fun out of the game?


1. AE/Coalitions - I find that these are too much of a knife edge thing whereby I either expand like crazy, just about balancing it and so nothing happens, or I take a single province too much too fast and BOOM 'x has entered a coalition, x has entered a coalition, x has entered a coalition, x has entered a coalition, x has entered a coalition'.

Also, and this could be just me, and I could be wrong, but getting your ass absolutely handed to you and having to return alot of stuff should speed up the reduction of AE or something. It just kinda sucks when you get wrecked and afterwords your still enemy no 1.


2. Coring Costs/Increased Coring Costs Ideas - Seriously paying 200+ Monarch points for a province when you have no real way to influence Monarch Point creation outside random ruler stats and events is a major annoyance, add to that things like Berber traditions and I find myself increasingly wondering ... why am I playing this? It's not even to say that your income, manpower, trade significantly increase from these super costly provinces to make them feel worthwhile.

It's basically the reason that I find recently that only the Ottoman's are in anyway enjoyable, and even then I still have to do gamey things like abuse 'overseas expansion' to deal with Berber traditions.


3. Every War For the AI is TOTAL WAR - Seriously A.I you got what you wanted, you can get a decent peace deal at 50% war score ... nope this is a battle to the death involving all our manpower and an infinite number of mercs and loans!!!


4. Forts - I love forts as a mechanic, and its way better than the situation before with blanket sieges, but they still don't work as intended IMO and you encounter serious movement anomalies that are frustrating and can be the difference between winning and losing a war as you try to connect your two armies, especially as a smaller up and coming nation against countries with large stacks and several forts seemingly maintained fully in clusters.


5. Nothing To Do But Expand and War ... but lets make that as annoying as possible - I know it's tough, and this is a great game (I have sunk 850 hours on it so easily gotten my monies worth!) and the developers are trying to make in between wars somewhat interesting, but they really haven't IMO.

But the problem then becomes all the things they have added to stop you warring like increased coring costs, hyper AE, if your discovered fabricating a claim it slows to a crawl and just the million other big and little things to make your going to war that much harder ... without really making it harder, but more like making it slower and more tedious. Like I said, I'm not Mr Wonderful full of amazing ideas about how to improve this situation, but it is a situation I still feel increasingly everytime I play the game.


6. Sometimes You Feel The Game Doesn't Play Ball - This is a harder one to describe, but things like the Burgandy Inheritance not firing despite 2/3 full wars, or trying to create the Netherlands and having the map and alliances completely stop you for 50-100 years where you have zero else to do, or as a mentioned in point one either no coalition or everyone coalition (especially within the HRE) or other things that happen and instead of responding "right how do I overcome this" I just hit exit and restart a fresh game rather than slog it out.



So what do you guys think, anyone else in the same boat? As I said, I just recently find I quit games, even before I have become unstoppable because I just reach a point where I ask myself "Why am I doing this? This is not fun but a pain".

Maybe I just need a break from playing, but the only problem is, I took a break, came back after a couple of patches and a DLC and haven't completed a single game in a long time.

Anyway, this is meant to be a ranty/aggressive post, I'm just curious if anybody else is in the same boat as me really and I'm curious if there are any other problems or things that kinda suck some of the fun out of playing?

 

[IIWW]

True. These changes (especially the coring one) made the game less fun. Not harder, difficulty is the same. It is a bit slower, but in general it means rather not spending those ADM on developement etc, rather than limiting conquest that much. A harsher manpower "laws" would work better imo. Or anything else, this is one of worst ideas PDS had in this game.

 

[satyrlord]

Yeah it's incredibly boring now, I can't even play it in single player anymore, except if I add a ton of mods or work on my own mods. It's still great fun in multiplayer because of the different mindset and unexpected actions but I am so over this game.


It's still fun to play as casual as possible or from inertia, while I wait for another game of this quality, but at this point, everything they add feels like unnecessary bloat. And it's sooooooooooooo slow. Every mod that adds features is slowing down to a crawl. The engine sucks big time by now, and CK2 is no better. Vanilla CK2 is almost unplayable now because of the lags and vanilla EU4 is just bland. I think they expect modders to add flavor, but most modders can't keep up with the pace of updates so the modding community is slowly dying, except for the few heroes who struggle daily to keep it alive.

So, dear Paradox: give these games a dignified death, stop milking the corpses for money and focus on new income avenues. It's way past end-of-life, the technology is obsolete (still no scaling UI in 2016, are you kidding me?) and it can only bring diminishing returns. Stabilize it and let it die, this way at least modders will have a stable version to make a decent mod out of this jumbled mess.

if you want to make a good game, focus on the tech and learn from Amplitude Studios. Their engine is at least 10 years ahead of everything Paradox can come up with and Endless Legend scales dramatically better with computing power than Clausewitz.

 

[lymond]

You make some good individual points..no doubt. The AE is the one thing I find most ridiculous.

I stil have fun going for achievements though, and only ever finished one game (as Poland) so that aspect does not concern me.

Austria is still quite bonkers in the HRE which bother me and ruined a good Burgundy game I had going, although I'm still trying to make that one work.

 

[ChildeR]

Only 1. and 6. really resonate, and the former in the opposite way. There was a patch or two where coalitions actually happened and lead to interesting situations when you weren't yet huge and able to beat them down at will. Now they are again a non-issue at least with my play style where I don't go all-out and tend to expand in multiple directions. I'd like to see something to make the mechanic more interesting. 6. is, I think, mostly because I've learned how the game ticks, so something expected not happening or unexpected happening feels more significant.

None of the others feel worse than they were earlier in the game's life. Forts I like better than the siege-every-province model, and though I think the way they worked initially better than now (more predictable beats whatever the current goal is), they are still an improvement. Total war is annoying, but it's always been the case, and I don't think it's any worse now. Lack of non-war/expansion options likewise to some extent, but I think that's been improved. I certainly prefer the new exploration system, the development and building systems are nice, and there are loads of non-expansion war terms compared to how it used to be.

Ps. You could try going back to some old version for a game if you feel nostalgic. You'll probably appreciate the improvements when you remember what things were like...

 

[Sandmann]

2. National focus?

 

[Sneering Imperialist]

I agree, especially with 2, 4 and 5. The massive hike in coring cost was, in my opinion, the single worst thing PDox has done to the game. It made the first half of the game slow and intensely frustrating for every nation except those with early coring cost reduction (Ottos). Sure, they added admin efficiency, but it starts at level 17; I'd wager most players don't even get to that point before boredom kicks in.

I used to enjoy the game far more than I do currently, now I just resort to quirky strategies like migrating to the new world to alleviate the boredom/frustration thats involved in playing 'normally'.

 

[Phibs]

No 5 is the only one I can relate to. I wish there were more internal politics to play with, including dynastic.

 

[bbqftw]

I agree, especially with 2, 4 and 5. The massive hike in coring cost was, in my opinion, the single worst thing PDox has done to the game. It made the first half of the game slow and intensely frustrating for every nation except those with early coring cost reduction (Ottos). Sure, they added admin efficiency, but it starts at level 17; I'd wager most players don't even get to that point before boredom kicks in.

I used to enjoy the game far more than I do currently, now I just resort to quirky strategies like migrating to the new world to alleviate the boredom/frustration thats involved in playing 'normally'.

The other option is running gigantic vassals (we're talking 300-2000 development) for expansion early game but I can see why that's not a particularly interesting gameplay style

 

[MordinSolis]

Why do people complain about the "coring cost spike" ? (I assume they mean when CC was recalculated to include the 3 dev types instead of only basetax)
Is there any reason why 2 provinces with same BT but one having much more production/manpower should cost the same?

Also Berber traditions have gotten much better imagine they once were 200% CC and now they are down to a mere 50%.

On the MP generation you can influence it by way of national focus (unless you dont own the dlc but thats another snakepit i would really like to avoid)
by being a republic and with managing your country up to an economy that can handle +3 advisors .

I have to agree on the things to do while not at war.
PDX really should invest more in that part of the game but i think they wont since most devs seems to prefer the very common Blobb as hard and fast as possible way of playing eu4.

 

[yezhanquan]

On point 5, it really depends on where you are on the map. If you're playing near Southeast Asia/Africa, colonization and wars to control trade can be more rewarding than warring for its own sake. I just started with patch 1.15 (with no DLCs activated; waiting for that darn sale), so maybe the fatigue hasn't set in yet. One reason why I hate warring in EU IV is the moment you take your eyes off diplomacy, you lose that royal marriage + alliance with the Ottomans, who happens to be an ally with your new rival. Oh, and their score is no. 1 too. Fun times.

Also, I crossed over from CK2. Over there, playing without trying to war IS the bigger boredom.

 

[HeartsofMetal]

The thing that annoys me the most is that the game runs like arse after 1700.

 

[Path]

With admin efficiency 1 and administrative ideas you could push down coring costs to 1 paper mana per dev using overseas coring with any tag prior to the change to overseas coring--this was after the spike in coring costs. Now the same setup will cost you 3 paper mana per dev, a 200% increase, slowing down progress terribly for any tag that isn't blessed with RCC.

 

[GeneralPetrov]

2. Coring Costs/Increased Coring Costs Ideas - Seriously paying 200+ Monarch points for a province when you have no real way to influence Monarch Point creation outside random ruler stats and events is a major annoyance, add to that things like Berber traditions and I find myself increasingly wondering ... why am I playing this? It's not even to say that your income, manpower, trade significantly increase from these super costly provinces to make them feel worthwhile.

This is one of the complaints I keep seeing and I really don't understand. If you feel coring a province is too expensive and not worth it... Don't core it?

 

[yezhanquan]

This is one of the complaints I keep seeing and I really don't understand. If you feel coring a province is too expensive and not worth it... Don't core it?

Overextension, I reckon. Provinces which force you to take that had to be cored if you want to go anywhere else.

 

[itsuart]

For me fun certainly diminished. I'm not sure if it's game "fault" or I just played it too much too long.
My list of frustration is bit different than OP's:
1. Westernization now is no brainier. In early versions (you know, when comets were literally ravaging the skies and you progressed by stability level) it was major undertaking, a decision. No, even DECISION. Since 2-3 patches ago is 'yeah, why not?'. Whole Africa has western tech by 18th century.
2. Breaking changes, breaking changes everywhere: if you've missed 2-3 patches game is very different. So, no long running campaigns.
3. Bugs. Tons of them. Because of drastic changes each patch there are multitude of them every time. So you don't start playing until at least one patch patching patch's bugs released. And of course, you can't attach your save in bugreport post. Because it's too big. Why can't they increase the limit is a big mystery.
4. Weird ZoC, that keeps frustrating you since it's introduction (one does not hire merc and expect it to be able to move anymore. Oh and ability to disband it also under a question). Wasn't new fort system introduced like half a year ago? If it can't be fixed, ditch it. Replace with something else.
5. After certain point AI not only can't contain you, it doesn't even trying (100 AE... 200 AE... coalition? Why bother? Is not like this huge aggressor will eat as one by one, right? Let us better gang up on that cocky minor!) Alas this might be exactly right decision - let the player get drown in boredom!
6. AI is still 'situational', it has no strategic plan: Ottomans will follow magic missions and eat Mamluks, but rarely go anywhere after that, doing nothing just sitting there; colonizers will not try to interfere in your conquest of India and spice islands.

 

[IIWW]

Why do people complain about the "coring cost spike" ? (I assume they mean when CC was recalculated to include the 3 dev types instead of only basetax)
Is there any reason why 2 provinces with same BT but one having much more production/manpower should cost the same?

Because it got higher before the introduction of developement system, thats the part we complain about, not the transition between base tax and developement system.. In 1.11 it got ~40% higher.

This is one of the complaints I keep seeing and I really don't understand. If you feel coring a province is too expensive and not worth it... Don't core it?

Even better idea, don't play the game at all, if You have problem with certain aspects of it. This forum should be used exclusively for praising EU4 -,-

 

[GeneralPetrov]

Overextension, I reckon. Provinces that force you to take that had to be cored if you want to go anywhere else.

Again, I don't understand, it does not force you to core it, you just have to put up with rebellions and diplomatic penalties if you don't. That seems pretty logical to me.

 

[GeneralPetrov]

Even better idea, don't play the game at all, if You have problem with certain aspects of it. This forum should be used exclusively for praising EU4 -,-

Wow, what an insightful and completely mature reply!

 

[yezhanquan]

Again, I don't understand, it does not force you to core it, you just have to put up with rebellions and diplomatic penalties if you don't. That seems pretty logical to me.

The classic tradeoff/opportunity cost debate. I don't have any DLCs activated, but I know I'll be getting that core, because as Ming, the minimum 50% local autonomy means that if the province is not cored, it will be really useless to me.