My thoughts on current state of game

[Mafiabrett]

The first 80-100 years is excellent and tons of fun for the most part.

However once it reaches the mid to late 1500s I just not having fun with the game anymore. After the end of 30 years war, it tends to mark the point where I lose interest as all the interesting and exciting stuff comes to a end.. The first 100 years seems to be the only things the Dev's care about these past Patches and DLC, to the point that the mid game and late game begin to suffer. Half the time I don't even think they care that the late game becomes a annoyance.

1. The Institution spread.
In my latest game nearly every country in the world is at the same level (1670s) which feels broken! No way India or China should be equal to the European colonizers.. But they are. I understand trying to give RotW a fighting chance, but it should be a long uphill battle for them as it was historically.

2. Leads me to my next point, the Protectorates.
Simply don't work and are not worth the effort when they decide to break away without a fight a few years after you made them one.. All because they share the same institutions and tech level as the player. Play as the British, try to historically make all of India into several protectorates is no longer possible. They break away far too often.

3. The Forts.
In the late game there are just way too many of them. Late game should be focused more on large scale battles between alliances. Not "How long will it take me to siege 13 level-8/9 forts in the HRE". Plus the minor nations that do still exist, majority of the time don't even come close to the force limit required to siege the late game forts.. How do you even expect them to have a chance? I know this will be a extreme example but.. Napoleon's armies didn't have to siege down the entire HRE in 1805, nor did it take them 20 to 50 years to completely dismantle it.. It took only 1-2 years! involving maybe only a dozen large scale battles.

4. Stragetic Battles.
They seem to be getting worse. Especially since Terrain Width doesn't exist anymore and Attrition doesn't effect battles at all either. Also am I the only one who wishes we could flank battles? Lets say France and Austria are duking it out in Wien with France attacking from the province to the West.. If im allied with the Austrians and join the battle from the same province that France entered from, shouldn't our alliance get a massive flanking bonus for lets say... 3-7 in game days? Something that won't break the battles but will at least help inflict more casualties using a Strategy rather than a simple "who has higher discipline and better general".

5. The Mughals, Marathas, and Qing.
All 3 of them huge historical regional empires.. but they never show up without player intervention. Qing usually being the only one if lucky enough that Ming falls apart and if Korea doesn't eat them. The Timurids should focus on forming the Mughals more often before their demise.. (Or after) but that shouldn't stop the Persian rebels from also showing up.. We NEED both a strong Persia and a strong Mughals. Finally.. The Marathas. I don't think Ive ever seen them form. Personally I wouldn't mind a railroaded event similar to the Dutch, just to have them show up and upset the current Jaunpur, Bahmanis, and Vijayanagar balance. Anyone else agree?

6. Creation of former/new states.
One thing that has always bugged me, is when the AI vs AI. The war almost always ends with one nation just taking land from the other. Even if a ruler personality is something other than a Militarist. I would like to see the AI use the release nation decision more often in peace treaties. Going back to India.. Yes for awhile there was about only 3-4 nations when the Mughals ruled it, however once the Marathas showed up and War'd against the Mughals, they didn't simply just take land. They allowed multiple former and new nations to pop up. Something that obviously wouldn't happen in the current state of the game...

7. Development.
Im still against a 1 button to improve developments whether its Player or AI. It must be much better if it was a passive prosperity thing. The longer a province goes without war or looting, the more it develops. But I feel the Dev's know its too late to scrap the old idea, as it was one of the main selling points of that DLC. So how about some changes? For one, we need more ways to lower development. Sieges and Battles on a province should have a chance at decreasing the development. Especially large scale battles (100k vs 100k). Second, the AI needs to stop just focusing on ONE PROVINCE. I sometimes look at a nation with 6 provinces and they will have 1 province that has 30 more development than the others which go untouched.

8. Japan.
So much potential for Japan to be a fun location to play. Ive seen a lot of interesting ideas from other users how this can be improved. One of my favorite ideas is a HRE-like system where the Emperor is a mere title with benefits and vows to protect and keep balance between the rest of the daiymos. But I think Id require more daiymos.

9. Where have the Long Wars Gone??
In about the 800 or so hours Ive put into EU4. The BEST time Ive ever-EVER had was when I played as the Papal States and literally had a 34 Year War with a much stronger France back in late 2014. I made a old thread about it here
Nowadays, once a war reaches that 5 year threshold, the modifier in the peace deal is simply too great that no war goes on for much longer than 5 years anymore. 30 Years War?? More like the 5 Years War. The Great Northern War?? More like the Short Northern War... See where im going with this?

So yea that's mostly it. If there was any thing more i wished the game had. It would be more decisions and chain-events for peacetime AND wartime.
Let me know what ya'll think. Hope the Dev's are watching.

 

[Viperswhip]

I can get behind a lot of this. I do not like institution spread at all, nor the very idea of it, but I also don't like estates. Here's what happens to me.

I have 3 primary ways of playing the game

1.51 play a lot
1.31, play quite a lot get annoyed when the Inheritance doesn't fire, take a few days off
Current, play for a couple hours, get a bit bored, stop and rever to an earlier patch.

 

[Dominion]

There are certain fun things that go beyond the 1500's such as HRE OPM > Germany, which does take a while (tons of fun by the way, I do recommend trying it).

I still have hopes that the new age mechanic does open them up for some rebalancing of time frames and the whole Institute/Age ideas are just a preview for a more organic gameplay overall.

This whole "click a button, get an effect" is interrupting the flow of the game imho. When going for WC for example you will always have this AdminTech27 explosion.

I clicked a button. There was no event, no prerequirement, no interaction with nations. I was just the guy who clicked a button and now I eat up half the world.

Having the AI force-release more nations during the first few ages while blobbing more aggressively towards the end itself would be an idea or my personal favorite:
AI behavior bound to player aggression.

Coalitions are half a step in that direction but they're more annoying than functional though they do admittedly work partially.
I can see something like an anti-imperialism behavior coming in similar as to what they have right now.
For example: Being too strong leads to all bordering nations refusing to engage in war. Ever.

This is ridiculous. I am watching Bahmanis eat up half of India while the league wars aren't firing just because I have a border with Austria while 4 provinces are between me and Bahmanis. Way too binary of a system.

Instead make threat a global thing that gets reduced by distance, get rid of the negative distance modifier after 1720 to enable worldwide alliances between nations that are outraged or threatened, just to throw a wild idea in the ring.

Suddenly your Castille in control of Africa and half of India can find itself checking the diplo-tab to find a French-Ottoman-Ming alliance.
Turns your "I move, I click, I conquer" war into strategic rearrangement of troops and the need to resupply whenever a front seems to lose.

 

[rho]

It feels that Paradox are in a bit of a catch 22 situation when it comes to late game vs early game. Almost no matter what they do, people are going to play the early game more. 1444 is by far and away the most popular starting date, and that would take a lot of work to change. Almost everyone plays through the 15th century, but a lot of games stop before they reach the 18th and 19th. Part of that is because the late game is less compelling, but it's also partly just because countries get too big, players achieve their goals, or so on. If I'm doing an achievement run and get the achievement by 1550, what incentive do I have to play another 270 years?

They've made content like the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War, but I see them way less often than I see the Iberian Wedding or the War of the Roses. I just don't see that part of the game as often, and even when I do, I've often changed history so much by then that historical events can't happen the way that they're supposed to.

All of which leaves them with the decision, do they try to add interesting new content that everyone will see, or do they try to add to the parts that not as many people will ever experience? Adding to the parts that people are playing and enjoying the most seems like a better return on investment, but it just exacerbates the problem further. The best parts get better, and the rest stagnates.

I think the best thing they could do to address it would be to encourage people to play with different start dates. For one, this would mean they'd have to pay as much attention to the global political situation at these different dates as they do to the 1444 start. Which is a lot of attention. Just go look through some of the more historically minded posts in the suggestions forum to get an idea of how difficult it is to accurately reflect a small region, let alone the entire world. Beyond that, they'd also have to include more achievements for later starting dates. There are currently 204 achievements for 1444, and 1 achievement for all other starting dates. then they'd have to ensure that there were as many interesting events spread throughout the game, and they'd have to be sure to promote the other starting dates more... and even after that, most people would still probably start in 1444.

It's a difficult problem, and not one that I have an easy solution to.

 

[Sfan]

Well, I agree with most of your points, I think everyone agrees, so I will specifically give my feeling for lategame, as one of the few persons that really enjoy lategame.

The problem is that the only possible fun there could be in lategame is to do a specific achievement/a WC, because once you understand the game and played it for several hundred hours, whatever how remote your start is, you will be strong enough for you to face no real challenge apart from a few countries from some point in the 17th or 18th century. And the "siege every level 8 fort, cycle truces, steamroll minors like an hegemonic tyrant" is a specific kind of fun. You really need some extremely hard starts, or hard/very hard difficulty level to have a consistent challenge, but then there is also a real threat of losing, which is frustrating if you see no way of possibly coming back

There is some real fun to watch the game lategame, however, because the AI becomes extremely agressive against other AIs after dip23, which leads to permanent wars in Europe that can come out with the same result that what you want from other regions.
But there are also so many things you need to think of, that whenever I finish a game this is a big "phew", and starting a new one always is refreshing.

And I totally agree with Dominion's proposal to make distance penalty scale with diplo tech. This way the French-Ottoman alliance in 1500 is impossible, but the English-Ming alliance in 1800 can be a thing.

It is inevitable that lategame is problematic once the player achieves his goal. I don't see any way Paradox could make it interesting, because we, as players against AIs, will outgrow our expectations. Each of us has to find its fun there, and the real way to go around this is to set specific goals for each campaign, and some achievements, obviously.

 

[Dominion]

They've made content like the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War, but I see them way less often than I see the Iberian Wedding or the War of the Roses. I just don't see that part of the game as often, and even when I do, I've often changed history so much by then that historical events can't happen the way that they're supposed to.

What french revolution. What American Revolutionary war. I do play through the end in half my runs. Haven't seen the french revolution once and only got to see the USA one time.

Which was a rather boring side conflict instead of a proxy war engulfing half of Europe.

That's not content. That's a triggered DoW with no love given to beyond it.

Quite a decent chunk of Europe players keep praising the League wars as 'the most fun I have in this game' and end a lot of runs shortly after.
That's unrelated to any achievement. It's just because there's something they can look forward too.

From the top of my head I couldn't even come up with anything interesting post-1600 in the game.

One possible approach would be giving attention to formable nations.

Look at Prussia. THREE events related to the nations' identity and only one of them even gives militarism iirc. Fun.

Now look at Germany.

0

0 Events

I get no additional immersion, no event chains, no background story.
A lot of times, when forming Germany, Austria also tends to blob quite a bit, so why not let the tension reflect ingame? There is NOTHING lategame that would incentivize me to actually form a nation.

GB is the most horrid example imho.

I change color. Wow.

And I completely agree with the achievement idea.

 

[Indigo Blue]

What french revolution. What American Revolutionary war. I do play through the end in half my runs. Haven't seen the french revolution once and only got to see the USA one time.

Which was a rather boring side conflict instead of a proxy war engulfing half of Europe.

That's not content. That's a triggered DoW with no love given to beyond it.

Quite a decent chunk of Europe players keep praising the League wars as 'the most fun I have in this game' and end a lot of runs shortly after.
That's unrelated to any achievement. It's just because there's something they can look forward too.

From the top of my head I couldn't even come up with anything interesting post-1600 in the game.

One possible approach would be giving attention to formable nations.

Look at Prussia. THREE events related to the nations' identity and only one of them even gives militarism iirc. Fun.

Now look at Germany.

0

0 Events

I get no additional immersion, no event chains, no background story.
A lot of times, when forming Germany, Austria also tends to blob quite a bit, so why not let the tension reflect ingame? There is NOTHING lategame that would incentivize me to actually form a nation.

GB is the most horrid example imho.

I change color. Wow.

And I completely agree with the achievement idea.

I think certain things are a function of the fact that Great powers have a tendency to ally.

There have been numerous situations where I've watched the game but after a certain point of growth wars stop happening in western or eastern europe...

There might be something to the idea of having an ever increasing relationship penalty to non vassal nations - to prevent or mitigate great power alliances and forcing more dynamism in the mid power range area.

 

[gronak]

The Marathas. I don't think Ive ever seen them form. Personally I wouldn't mind a railroaded event similar to the Dutch, just to have them show up and upset the current Jaunpur, Bahmanis, and Vijayanagar balance. Anyone else agree?

Is the Marathas even a nation / formable nation in eu4? As far as I'm aware the only indian formables are muhgals, hindustan and bharat.
Nothing is said in the wiki about it either.
So closest thing to it would be perhaps Bharat? I have seen that form once or twice, albeit a very rare occurrence. Often India is 3 big blobs, all with strong allies, or even allied to each other which leads to them doing nothing but developing and becoming even stronger.

I think a good way to deal with the fort problem would be to limit how many level 8 forts one country can have. Maybe make one in 4 forts a level 8, which would help drastically as they would then only be placed in strategic locations rather than everywhere. Only the Netherlands should however be exempt from this, as they are famed for their hard to siege fortresses, and numerous forts.

 

[Starisc]

1. The Institution spread.
In my latest game nearly every country in the world is at the same level (1670s) which feels broken! No way India or China should be equal to the European colonizers.. But they are. I understand trying to give RotW a fighting chance, but it should be a long uphill battle for them as it was historically.

Agreed. I don't mind they got rid of the harsh westernization approach but this is ridiculous. If a couple of major powers like Ming manage to keep up I would understand. But every single nation in Asia?

3. The Forts.
In the late game there are just way too many of them. Late game should be focused more on large scale battles between alliances. Not "How long will it take me to siege 13 level-8/9 forts in the HRE".

So true. Offensive is mandatory and managing multiple sieges is tedious, particularly with high attrition forcing us to park most of the army next to the siege, just to miss the relief battle at 49% (always perfectly timed by AI) and lose siege progress again.

Finally, my problem with development is rather that there is way to much of it to sensibly conquer in the late game. Every small Asian nation has 30+ dev provinces. I don't have paper mana for that sh**!
It leads to ever more gamey solutions for wide games like recently Florry's Tribal - HRE Emperor Coptomans.

 

[Shaitan87]

I think for the later game stuff they haven't found a way to simulate it that's fun. What stopped countries from getting huge? Well attrition was a huge factor in wars, but it's no fun so they make it very minor, which allows you to do a lot of stuff they couldn't during the time period. And then managing large countries effectively was also very difficult during the time period, but it's hard to make game mechanics that model it that are enjoyable.

In the late midgame you usually can see how the game will progress. There aren't large dynamic changes, like the protestant reformation, that dramatically change countries goals/motivation, and it's easy to see how the game will go and it turns into a chore you only pursue if their is an achievement you are after.

I wonder why they have been so quiet about institutions, I haven't seen a single paradox post referring to it, despite the majority of people seemingly believing it needs some tweaks.

Edit: Oh and personally I would like to see a change to core creation cost, it's just to good. I think it should be divided up, maybe having the time to core not affected by the cost, or giving increased coring cost v certain religions or accepted culture groups or something.

 

[Sfan]

What there should be to model realistic empires would be to have unstated province revolt frequently and go independant, especially if they have unaccepted culture, because local governors would proclaim themselves independant and you could only learn about it in a year, like IRL Ottomans. The only way to go around this would be to focus on inward perfection and to stop expanding at one point, China style. But noone would want this, this would be totally unfun. Blobs are kinda the only alternative so that the game doesn't feel like it ended.

 

[zorkman]

The game should end when the French Revolution/Napoleonic era starts around 1789, as the game is not suited for this period. If a new Victoria game does appear this should start around this period and end when HOI starts. Would improve both games no end.

 

[Sfan]

Why isn't the game suited for the Napoleonic wars? I agree that is not suited for the massive industrialisation era, but the Napoleonic wars are the cherry on the EU4 era cake, they are basically the natural direction in which every EU4 game goes, to a lategame slugfest between a few majors and big alliance blocks across Europe. For this, at least, the game is realistic.

 

[Benghi Bon]

Suddenly your Castille in control of Africa and half of India can find itself checking the diplo-tab to find a French-Ottoman-Ming alliance.
Turns your "I move, I click, I conquer" war into strategic rearrangement of troops and the need to resupply whenever a front seems to lose.

The only way to counter these alliances of doom is by outblobbing them to kingdom come and destroying the blobs, or any actually even remotely strong nation, before arbitrary dates leave out distance modifiers. Once again, no depth just an artificial difficulty barrier to game the player. It would add nothing to the game but encourage blobbing further. There's no way a player can fight such a ludicrous alliance without godly allies themselves, and that is usually not the case.

 

[Dominion]

The only way to counter these alliances of doom is by outblobbing them to kingdom come and destroying the blobs, or any actually even remotely strong nation, before arbitrary dates leave out distance modifiers. Once again, no depth just an artificial difficulty barrier to game the player. It would add nothing to the game but encourage blobbing further. There's no way a player can fight such a ludicrous alliance without godly allies themselves, and that is usually not the case.

Other way around.

My example was based on a country that was already outblobbing them, therefor they created an alliance.

You are thinking of alliance mechanisms as they work right now which are pretty much "I'll take as many at once as possible as long as they're my size and not my rival".

 

[Mutton]

The game is broken. Stopped playing after the institution spread, but im sure the devs will fix this issue soon and i can play eu4 again.

 

[Sfan]

The game, if anything, has become way more interesting and rewards skill way more now that you use institutions and don't westernize. It used to be a ridiculous strat of tentacle of knowledge towards Crimea no matter your start in Asia, while intentionally falling behind in diplo and admin as fast as possible, and a tentacle towards colonizers elsewhere. Now there is a real reflexion and a real strategy to build around institutions. In some situations you want to develop, but in others you don't want to empower your neighbours. This depends on plenty of factors. You should really give it a try.

 

[Mafiabrett]

Is the Marathas even a nation / formable nation in eu4? As far as I'm aware the only indian formables are muhgals, hindustan and bharat.
Nothing is said in the wiki about it either.
So closest thing to it would be perhaps Bharat? I have seen that form once or twice, albeit a very rare occurrence. Often India is 3 big blobs, all with strong allies, or even allied to each other which leads to them doing nothing but developing and becoming even stronger.

I think a good way to deal with the fort problem would be to limit how many level 8 forts one country can have. Maybe make one in 4 forts a level 8, which would help drastically as they would then only be placed in strategic locations rather than everywhere. Only the Netherlands should however be exempt from this, as they are famed for their hard to siege fortresses, and numerous forts.

Yep they do exist. But like I said and from what you kind've confirmed.. Its nearly impossible for them to show up, to the point where people like you question if they are even a TAG at all within the game. That's pretty sad, a huge part of Indian history is just thrown under the rug. The Dutch are deemed important enough to have a massive spawn/independance event, but not the Marathas?

To get them to form or have their cores show up, requires Mughals to be formed and own atleast one core on a Maratha culture province between 1660 and 1680. They will always spawn as a Empire tier country as well. Kinda ridiculous prerequisites huh? It shouldn't matter who owns those provinces, as long as Maratha isn't their primary culture. Also if its a Islamic nation the MTTH should be higher.

 

[minderrx]

Institutions system is broken, played lithuania kept drowning money into adopting them asap but in the end still got significantly out-teched by china, india and most steppe nomads!?

Oh god the forts, late game every war in a nutshell is sieging a fort for 80% of wars duration while you watch your troops die of attrition, but dont you dare move your troops or it will break the siege and you start over. So what you do Is park your army close by the fort and baby sit.

Very fun

Rather than a fort level being the defining defence of a province why don't they make a fort give a % defence bonus and the real defence comes from the actual development of the province.
Why don't they make assaulting forts a viable option. Maybe in the middle ages they were very costly in lives but surely countries developed more sophisticated techniques to deal with them in time.
Why don't siege general pips affect how well your army assault forts
Why cannons take a million years to do something? Im sure thousands of cannons hammering a star fort everyday for a month would pretty much destroy any fortifications.
Why do forts block adjacent tiles, it can block the tile the fort is in but IRL whats stopping me from completely ignoring forts and just attacking their capital? What they should do is have 50% warscore cap from normal provinces + capital and the rest 50% could be only obtained from sieging down forts.
Fort garrison should suffer attrition if all adjacent provinces are occupied by the enemy. In this case where would they get their supplies from?

Maybe im just talking out of my arse but forts are such a frustrating feature

 

[Skyaway]

As EU4 grows after every expansion, the early game got great improved.
But the mid-to-late game experience is pale and weak.

And the true problem is EU4 seems a little too large in its scope.
Here my thread mentioned 3 weeks ago.