If you could buff or nerf any feature in EU4, what would it be?

[MachopPower69]

For me it would be nerfing native nations and have reform growth until they reform. Once you have a successfully cored province near a tribe, they can instantly reform and declare war on your colony, eating them up because your colony has no divisions. A better way is to slowly reform over time until they are able to be reformed. A way to do this is to increase opinion with the reformed neighbours or increase development, kind of like institutions.

 

[Maxxie42]

I definitely agree on Religious needing a buff. I think a good start would be going from +1 to +2 missionaries. Over the years, the number of provinces has sky rocketed, making missionaries that much slower in comparison. At this point, only religions that get access to bonus missionaries can hope to have a reasonable conversion pace. And speaking of, there's a massive discrepancy between religions like Coptic or Orthodox that get half a million missionaries, and religions like Tengri or Confucian that get none at all, and can't even get one from DotF. For all these religions, adding a missionary to Religious would make a really big difference.

 

[MachopPower69]

I definitely agree on Religious needing a buff. I think a good start would be going from +1 to +2 missionaries. Over the years, the number of provinces has sky rocketed, making missionaries that much slower in comparison. At this point, only religions that get access to bonus missionaries can hope to have a reasonable conversion pace. And speaking of, there's a massive discrepancy between religions like Coptic or Orthodox that get half a million missionaries, and religions like Tengri or Confucian that get none at all, and can't even get one from DotF. For all these religions, adding a missionary to Religious would make a really big difference.

Or have the ability to convert trade company provinces. The only way you can is by lucky events

 

[Ekcrbe]

This is maybe a bit niche, but I would buff navy tradition and nerf army tradition. By late game it's pretty easy to get army tradition in the 75-100 range after a big war and roll a bunch of great generals, but if you play normally (i.e. not focus all your effort on it for the memes and protect trade with 200% of your force limit), you're basically consigned to 10-30 navy tradition forever. I even took Naval Ideas in my most recent game—yes, unironically—and with its +1 fire and shock pips I was still sometimes rolling one star admirals. Since naval combat is extremely biased to favor quality over quantity and naval engagement depends strongly on admiral maneuver skill, NT is even more important to winning battles at sea than AT is on land.

Level 2 CoTs should have a small effect on NT, and level 3s should have a bigger one—it currently takes 5 Level 3 CoTs just to decrease NT decay from 5% to 4%, and sources of flat annual increases are incredibly sparse—just Naval Ideas and the Admin-Maritime policy for +1 each, plus several NIs. I also don't love that NT from protecting trade is scaled to force limit, since it punishes you for growing unless you make active use of what can become a huge force limit. I'm not quite sure what a good alternative is; maybe switching it to scaling with your currently deployed navy size, but that doesn't seem perfect either. In any case, it would be less important if NT were possible to find in other places outside of being one of the predestined naval powers or taking two very niche idea groups.

 

[Sidolowka]

This is maybe a bit niche, but I would buff navy tradition and nerf army tradition. By late game it's pretty easy to get army tradition in the 75-100 range after a big war and roll a bunch of great generals, but if you play normally (i.e. not focus all your effort on it for the memes and protect trade with 200% of your force limit), you're basically consigned to 10-30 navy tradition forever. I even took Naval Ideas in my most recent game—yes, unironically—and with its +1 fire and shock pips I was still sometimes rolling one star admirals. Since naval combat is extremely biased to favor quality over quantity and naval engagement depends strongly on admiral maneuver skill, NT is even more important to winning battles at sea than AT is on land.

Level 2 CoTs should have a small effect on NT, and level 3s should have a bigger one—it currently takes 5 Level 3 CoTs just to decrease NT decay from 5% to 4%, and sources of flat annual increases are incredibly sparse—just Naval Ideas and the Admin-Maritime policy for +1 each, plus several NIs. I also don't love that NT from protecting trade is scaled to force limit, since it punishes you for growing unless you make active use of what can become a huge force limit. I'm not quite sure what a good alternative is; maybe switching it to scaling with your currently deployed navy size, but that doesn't seem perfect either. In any case, it would be less important if NT were possible to find in other places outside of being one of the predestined naval powers or taking two very niche idea groups.

Come to speak of Naval Tradition I should really get to playing a Mahra run.

They get +1 Naval Tradition, -1% Naval Tradition Decay and +1 Naval Leader Manoeuvre in their ideas (and +5% Ship durability/-20% Naval Maintenance), meaning that you could stack this with Aristocratic, Naval and Maritime along with 100% innovativeness to get +3 Yearly Naval Tradition and -4% Naval Tradition Decay.

You can bet I'll still get like 1/0/1/6 admirals though

 

[Deliberus]

Nerf Absolutism to the ground, or make it's acquisition harder/piece meal. 5% extra discipline is already a big buff but an additional +30% admin efficiency and -50% foreign core duration is absurd.

 

[Maxxie42]

This is maybe a bit niche, but I would buff navy tradition and nerf army tradition.

I don't think army tradition needs to be nerfed. It wasn't very long ago that all sources of army tradition were nerfed from +1 to +0.5, so another nerf would really feel like overkill to me. Plus, you mention that through normal gameplay you always get high army tradition and low naval tradition, but that seems logical to me since this 'normal' gameplay involves frequent warfare but little care for naval matters. If you instead play a relaxed game of colonization, you'll have low army tradition from not going to war so often, but very high naval tradition from all the exploring.

One thing I would maybe change wrt naval tradition is to make naval battles give more of it though, because you usually only get one or two big naval battles per war, and after that the enemy is simply out of heavies.

 

[Piotrzeci]

Probably buff cavalry. It's weird how it just becomes pretty useless after early game.

 

[love sweden]

Buff: Religious, Cavalry
Nerf: Cavalry Flanking Range nerf it so hard that you remove it from the gamecode and replace it with something good instead its literally a placebo mechanic

 

[Triplebassist]

This is maybe a bit niche, but I would buff navy tradition and nerf army tradition. By late game it's pretty easy to get army tradition in the 75-100 range after a big war and roll a bunch of great generals, but if you play normally (i.e. not focus all your effort on it for the memes and protect trade with 200% of your force limit), you're basically consigned to 10-30 navy tradition forever. I even took Naval Ideas in my most recent game—yes, unironically—and with its +1 fire and shock pips I was still sometimes rolling one star admirals. Since naval combat is extremely biased to favor quality over quantity and naval engagement depends strongly on admiral maneuver skill, NT is even more important to winning battles at sea than AT is on land.

Level 2 CoTs should have a small effect on NT, and level 3s should have a bigger one—it currently takes 5 Level 3 CoTs just to decrease NT decay from 5% to 4%, and sources of flat annual increases are incredibly sparse—just Naval Ideas and the Admin-Maritime policy for +1 each, plus several NIs. I also don't love that NT from protecting trade is scaled to force limit, since it punishes you for growing unless you make active use of what can become a huge force limit. I'm not quite sure what a good alternative is; maybe switching it to scaling with your currently deployed navy size, but that doesn't seem perfect either. In any case, it would be less important if NT were possible to find in other places outside of being one of the predestined naval powers or taking two very niche idea groups.

They did make a change where blockading increases naval tradition. I happened to notice getting over +1 a year during a war once with about half my fleet blockading.

 

[Jarvin]

Probably buff cavalry. It's weird how it just becomes pretty useless after early game.

this is one of the most peculiar misconceptions about the game that I've seen in this community.

Matter of fact is: with very few exceptions(hordes) cavalry early game tends to be a much weaker option than it is later on.
Tech 6/7 purely combat output wise cavalry loses in a 1v1 against infantry
Tech 17/23 cavalry wrecks infantry like it's nothing.
But yes some changes to cavalry would be nice.
The IMHO best way to approach them would be to allow them to swap with infantry back and forth during shock/fire phase on the edges of the frontline(would require changes to their balance too)

 

[mras0]

Nerf Absolutism to the ground, or make it's acquisition harder/piece meal. 5% extra discipline is already a big buff but an additional +30% admin efficiency and -50% foreign core duration is absurd.

You could remove the discipline and (very inconsequential) foreign core duration bonuses and rushing absolutism would still be worth it. If you want to make it slower, just remove any instant changes (like harsh treatment of rebels and lowering autonomy), however you'd majorly upset the current meta. That's totally cool by me, but without other balance changes it'd just annoy everyone going for achievements/major conquests or force them to play hordes.

 

[Piotrzeci]

this is one of the most peculiar misconceptions about the game that I've seen in this community.

Matter of fact is: with very few exceptions(hordes) cavalry early game tends to be a much weaker option than it is later on.
Tech 6/7 purely combat output wise cavalry loses in a 1v1 against infantry
Tech 17/23 cavalry wrecks infantry like it's nothing.
But yes some changes to cavalry would be nice.
The IMHO best way to approach them would be to allow them to swap with infantry back and forth during shock/fire phase on the edges of the frontline(would require changes to their balance too)

Early game you can use cav for flanking, later it basically is stuck in "1v1" combat against enemy frontline. It's not really about their combat stats.

 

[Jarvin]

Early game you can use cav for flanking, later it basically is stuck in "1v1" combat against enemy frontline. It's not really about their combat stats.

Infantry can flank too, and while cavalry's flanking range is obviously higher trying to argue that this little difference is what somehow makes cav early on viable is just silly

 

[Meglok]

Buff cavalry in the early to early mid game. Malus in the mid to late game vs combined arms inf/arty. By then the infantry square with artillery support crushed cav.

Nerf f'n AI pirates into the ocean bottom.

Nerf DotF or change the way it works to something that makes sense.

Buff Religious, maybe another missionary and bonuses vs CoRs.

 

[EllisDee]

this is one of the most peculiar misconceptions about the game that I've seen in this community.

Matter of fact is: with very few exceptions(hordes) cavalry early game tends to be a much weaker option than it is later on.
Tech 6/7 purely combat output wise cavalry loses in a 1v1 against infantry
Tech 17/23 cavalry wrecks infantry like it's nothing.
But yes some changes to cavalry would be nice.
The IMHO best way to approach them would be to allow them to swap with infantry back and forth during shock/fire phase on the edges of the frontline(would require changes to their balance too)

Based on research, that's not entirely the case. Cavalry is just about marginally better than infantry in 1v1, and the tech 10 Reiters are superior to their equivalent infantry.

Anyway:
Buff Maritime.
Even the less-useful Idea Groups have some reason to pick them. But not Maritime. Maybe outside of SP it sees use...?

 

[nobodyinparticular]

Religious ideas as everyone mentions, perhaps something like -2 national unrest and +10% manpower in true faith provinces. Naval and Maritime are obvious choices, as it does not pay off to go that hard on your navy, even if the existing ideas were buffed. Best solution would be to mix 2-3 decent non-naval ideas to increase their general utility. The remaining naval related ideas would be stronger than they are now, so it's a more "dense" naval kit. Naval would be like inverse quality ideas, which is mostly army with a bit of navy, naval would be mostly navy with a bit of army. Some appropriate ideas could be reduced artillery cost, siege bonus, extra fire damage, increased supply range (you would have multiple modifiers per idea to make it work). You would merge and buff some of the other ideas, like rolling galley and heavy combat ability into one idea. Not sure about what would be appropriate for Maritime.

 

[Livigy]

I really like the idea and policy aspect of eu4. So the changes I would like to see would be to would be to strengthen that aspect of the game even further and lean into the games strengths. Perhaps some more mutually exclusive idea groups like the plutocratic/aristocratic ideas, for example, humanism could have a mutually exclusive opposing idea group focused on slavery.

Another idea group I would like to see would be focused on trade companies or have trade ideas reworked to focus on that aspect, such as having an additional 'exclusive building' in each trade region or perhaps reduce the autonomy of trade companies etc.

Another potential idea group could be focused on diplomatic relationships such as alliances or rivalries, with additional bonuses or mechanics geared towards that aspect of the game.

 

[holyvigil]

Get rid of the buffs that buff big nations just because they are big. I'd make things like "trading in" bonuses be per capita and let big nations actually fall apart.

 

[MachopPower69]

Another potential idea group could be focused on diplomatic relationships such as alliances or rivalries, with additional bonuses or mechanics geared towards that aspect of the game.

Speaking of alliances, maybe have defensive alliances be easier to battle. Lets say it is 1445 and you are getting your core back but your enemy has allied every major power in the region so you can't win. Maybe defensive alliances have the enemies allies less likely to join if it is within 5 years of forming the alliance. This prevents birding and it makes early conquests a bit easier than just waiting for the enemies allies to get loan heavy.