Has Some of the Fun Gone Out of This Game?

[MordinSolis]

Every single top SP idea set is something that gives heavy MP discounts

So Prussias God tier ideas that only have 10% stab cost are either not Top or 10% stab is a heavy MP discount ?
Same for Sweden also 10% stab only mp saver and Poland too ?
And not to leave out ROW ideas how about Japan ? 10% discipline and 15% inf combat not good ?

Because you cannot invest points (outside of waiting on tech)

You might be a bit outdated since Development seems like a good place to use points when you arent conquering maybe ?

 

[oliverpearl]

I couldn't agree more, coming back after cossacks was released there is still nothing to do at peace and it has become even harder to declare war as half the time your allies won't even join your war, especially at the start. The increased coring cost makes the game much more boring, waiting for the mana points to trickle in.

 

[bbqftw]

So Prussias God tier ideas that only have 10% stab cost are either not Top or 10% stab is a heavy MP discount ?
Same for Sweden also 10% stab only mp saver and Poland too ?
And not to leave out ROW ideas how about Japan ? 10% discipline and 15% inf combat not good ?

For SP, Poland, Brandenburg, Sweden are indeed bad idea sets compared to Qing and Mughals. Early RCC is so dominant now that overseas coring play is so heavily rewarded and non-RCC = gimped at overseas coring.

Of course one can always use nice military ideas to snowball and then form something like Italy

 

[Jomini]

So Prussias God tier ideas that only have 10% stab cost are either not Top or 10% stab is a heavy MP discount ?
Same for Sweden also 10% stab only mp saver and Poland too ?
And not to leave out ROW ideas how about Japan ? 10% discipline and 15% inf combat not good ?



You might be a bit outdated since Development seems like a good place to use points when you arent conquering maybe ?

Prussia is pretty terrible for maximized SP games. The leading candidate for pretty much every large scale record (fastest world conquest, one-tag, world conversion, European consolidation, etc.) is going to walk right past Prussia and get to the good ones - OE, Austria, Russia, Hordes, and the like.

Poland's ideas are also less than impressive for such maximalist achievements, their main strength comes from getting free Lithuanian integration.

And frankly, you can get pretty much all the benefit of Prussia's or Poland's ideas by getting them as marches and leading them to the fight.

In MP, sure these ideas are much better, but when I can bait the AI armies onto Osel or Aland to trap them every morale, discipline, and combat ability modifier is useless.



Ultimately the problem is that all the MP efficiency gains are recurring throughout the game and accelerating in the early game (get ideas faster); once you are a blob, military ideas are pretty much useless. At best they just save some gold, which you tend to roll in once you dominate global trade, from needing fewer Mercs or WE/reinforcement costs from using your own regiments.

As far as development, do not make me laugh. The cost to raise development is so woefully underpowered that razing was broken mechanic when you traded 1 Dev for 25 MP and then just cored the place yourself. But regardless, no you are not investing MP in any sort of technical sense, you are just spending MP for some flow of cash or manpower.

Investing MP would be where you could save or spend MP now to get more back later - like how buying buildings costs cash up front and pays out more cash over decades. Currently the game has no MP investment so there is zero tension between short and long term. There are only a handful convoluted things that get close to investing MP - getting to a place where you can run better advisers, waiting on tech ... but it all is so trivial and easy.

 

[SolSys]

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.

You are obviously no programmer as you can't seem to see the difference between the two engines.
I'm not a sports know-how, but if I were what you said would be akin to saying: Adrián Beltré is a better player than Lionel Messi.

 

[yezhanquan]

So "I have biggest trade income" is your "I won!" condition?

I don't have a "I won" condition, but if you want to insist that I have one, maybe that is one of them.

 

[Eidos_pl]

As someone that has spent hundreds of hours on this game and knows every possible trick in the book I will admit I agree with most of your points but there is one recent change thats is really a love/hate relationship, Favors. I have always wanted a system that doesnt allow me to use bbb as my personal battery ram when I am a lowly OPM in the empire. But now I have encountered something that makes this mechanic infurating, gridlock. I have started a few games (milan, hesse, holland) and at various points found myself utterly gridlocked just letting 20 years sim by because I simply cannot do anything due to the alliances around me. Meanwhile my allies have nothing to do and could help out anyways but no because I dont have 10 points. its a mechanic that is terrific in theory but horrible in practice

 

[Nuklearius]

As#

 

[Aquae Sulis]

I reverted to 1.14 and had a far more enjoyable experience.

The biggest problem at the moment is the skewed diplomacy system. Big nation - it's a bit slower but you can still snowball.

Small nation, go be frustrated for 100 years while you can't get a meaningful alliance.

Add to that the fact the AI cannot handle the new diplomacy - often leading suicidal wars without allies- means the end result is far less plausible than it was.

 

[Eidos_pl]

I reverted to 1.14 and had a far more enjoyable experience.

The biggest problem at the moment is the skewed diplomacy system. Big nation - it's a bit slower but you can still snowball.

Small nation, go be frustrated for 100 years while you can't get a meaningful alliance.

Add to that the fact the AI cannot handle the new diplomacy - often leading suicidal wars without allies- means the end result is far less plausible than it was.

Yea this is exactly what im thinking, I tried playing some CK2 but that game moves at the pace of a snail now its not even fun anymore. And totally agree I was very excited for the diplomacy system when they announced I wanted something like that forever. But it just does not work in practice. To me the fun is starting as a small nation and growing. I Tried a tuscany to italy run and was gridlocked until 1485.... 40 years !!!!. Austria loved aragon and france, france loved austria and papal state, web of like 16 alliances in italy. All resulting in total gridlock for me that is an absolute nightmare.

I find myself killing my games far more often these days as the only way I seem to be able to move is dow allies of my targets and make my actual target co-defendant (cuz ally wont attack them for whatever this "would destabilize" that i keep on seeing literally all the time) but if I attack this other country neither me or ally care about to drag other one to war then its all ok ???? So now instead of straight up war I have to war like 10 countries. This also sucks after this war as I have way way more truce timers and you guessed it gridlock again

 

[tric]

Agreed on most points. In particular, I really loathe the new forts system. It's just something that keeps getting in the way and it never actually feels fun to interact with. It's just a chore to manage mothballing them, tearing them down, moving around them when at war, etc etc. I think this was poorly thought through and implented by pdox and they really really need to go back to that and fix it in a patch. Rethink it from the ground up, because it's not fun. End of.

 

[gronak]

The only thing I don't find fun is the estates. Other than that, I like it. Yes, coring can be hard at times but it is manageable by creating vassals instead and using up the near useless diplo points.

 

[Noel84]

I completely agree with 5 of these. When I ask myself what the only worthwhile means of gaining power is the answer is conquest. The problem is that unless you're playing a truly awful start, conquest is pretty easy. Since there's no balance of power mechanic (and before anyone says coalitions, the balance of power is the concept of no one state/alliance being significantly stronger than all other states/alliances, not 'no state shall gain land in a kinda fast manner') the only three gameplay options for large nations are roleplaying (only enjoyable for a select group of players), only or mainly going after powers of roughly equal size (due to the fact that every eu4 SP war is an all-out napoleon style total war, this one doesn't last very long as any state you beat once or twice dies) or allying another great power or two and slamming the keyboard until even Genghis Khan thinks your empire's too big. Also, small nations are extremely tedious to play in europe (and nearly the same as great powers in the ROTW) because if you expand too fast all of europe will DOW you (how dare the evil random HRE city-state annex three other random city states with 20 years, come on France-Spain PU, let's get 'em). Also conquest is becoming more and more tedious because the devs seem to think adding difficulty to expanding will kill the game and instead do absolutely nothing but make expansion slower (if you disagree, please tell me having to spend some more admin points or being more patient to avoid a coalition is difficult and not just slow). The only thing I disagree with is the sixth point. Unless something completely random and utterly moronic happens (glitches, nonsensical alliances, long-time ally suddenly desires a province you've had for years and breaks the alliance, long-time ally rivals you for no other reason than 'they had an empty slot' etc.)

 

[adam_grif]

The only thing I don't find fun is the estates. Other than that, I like it. Yes, coring can be hard at times but it is manageable by creating vassals instead and using up the near useless diplo points.

Estates are good in theory but a bit dull in practice. I would prefer if estates had some connection to the missions you could take, in that they attempt to steer the direction of your country in various ways. Not just clicking buttons in the estates interface to keep the loyalty near 50 and handing out provinces when you expand.

 

[OldmansHQ]

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?

Although I disagree with a lot it of what you said. Overall, I do agree, but for more it's not to this extent.

 

[Peachrocks]

I find it interesting that the response to this is mostly positive, not so long ago such a thread would be mass disagree.

The problems this game has have been getting progressively worse despite some nice things being added. I gotta wonder whether we are going to see some change or is Eu4 going to continue to be someone's 'vision' with arbitrary nonsense rather then a strategy game at its potential.

 

[Prince Ire]

Hey, at least it isn't CK2, which recently introduced coalition mechanics literally nobody asked for.

 

[satyrlord]

You are obviously no programmer as you can't seem to see the difference between the two engines.
I'm not a sports know-how, but if I were what you said would be akin to saying: Adrián Beltré is a better player than Lionel Messi.

And you are obviously presumptuous. I'm a senior tester with 5 years experience, I do both black-box and white-box testing, code review and I also write some code (unit tests, functional tests). So, while you were right that I don't program game engines, it doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

I obviously don't know the inner workings of the engines but I can make an educated guess after analyzing the implementations. Even if the engines themselves would be equally sophisticated, the implementations are telling, and the technology PDS is using is many years behind what is currently done in video-game tech, especially by much smaller studios. You could have also drawn this conclusion yourself from the age of the engine itself and the reasons why Runemaster was cancelled.

Please stop assuming people on this forum are dumb or have no idea what they're talking about or that they're not IT professionals, it's rude. I also have a lot of friends who actually do game engine programming for the neighbors of Paradox (EA / DICE) so I consulted them before writing and they unanimously agree that the Clausewitz engine is really bad, both the engine itself and the current implementations.

The reasons why they're still using it are simple: it's much faster, easier and cheaper to use a tool you already know by heart that to train everyone in using a completely new tool. Most companies are guilty of the same thing, and they keep milking an old technology until it becomes too expensive to maintain, which means that when it will simply be too expensive to use the current technology compared to the new technology, they will upgrade something. That's why a lot of companies are still developing games using UE3 instead of the current UE4.9. I have another friend who works at EA and they're currently developing a game that's STILL using UE3. Business decision pure and simple.

 

[Aquae Sulis]

You could probably start categorising the less enjoyable features:

Present since start of game: total war, unbalanced AE (in both directions), impenetrable naval mechanics.

Those added by patches: Coring cost increase, fort micromanagement, trust/favours, CN/Vassal Liberty desire

Those added by expansions: Estates, Development (particularly the overdeveloped OPMs), Colonial Nations.

It frustrates me that there are features that are still in the game which are not enjoyable. It frustrates me even more when expansions, or free patches, introduce less enjoyable elements or human 'exploit' balances.

My favourite expansion has probably been Art of War. Why? Because the most involved, enjoyable experiences are warfare-related. Not trade, not estates, not Development which are all one-time actions - no warfare is the most significant time you interact/react dynamically.

This game doesn't need more static modifiers/mechanisms, it doesn't need more limiting features. It needs more dynamism.

Remove war and expansion and this game is sorely lacking in anything to do!

 

[SolSys]

And you are obviously presumptuous.

I can't argue with your statement as I admit my post can be read that way - after all, I didn't bother to explain much.

I'll try to address the points you raised as best as I can:
1. You bested me here as I haven't coded much in the last 5 years - had to go where the pay was better. I was a tester myself when I was a student so I know it can be a tough job if the company is less than stellar for "caring" to its workers. I hope you're in a better position than I was and wish you good luck on your endeavors.
2. The EU4 [and especially CK2] engine forks are old. PDS admitted in the past that while the engine itself is kept being improved, most of the time changes aren't being back-ported. BTW, many games end up not getting to market because they are simply not good enough - just like the 1st design of HoI4 was before they scraped it and started anew.
3. I'm sorry you feel that way as I try to be helpful [most of the time at least]. The "no programmer" comment is usually reserved for people who demand "make it better", but don't specify how or even realize what they demand is not possible due to one limitation or another.
4. Again, money. I'm not one to argue with this point.

What bothered me is that you compared two engines optimized for two different things as if to point one was better than the other when in fact they both were better than the other. With all due respect to Dice - and I was impressed with Frostbite 3 - there are still some areas where I'd chose Clausewitz over it.


Best regards,
SolSys


**I think you'll agree with me that your 2nd post was much well written/presented than your 1st post.