Paradox, some concerns I have...

[Dakka]

This is a repost of a thread I started in suggestions, as I feel that it was overlooked in that subforum and may be more appropriate in the main EU4 Forum


Hi Paradox,

I'm not sure where else to post this, and I hope that some one in the development studio reads and responds to this.
EU4 is by far my favorite game of all time and am about to hit the 2000 hours mark. I love it, my friends love it, and we have spent many the evening and weekend playing it, but in 1.14/1.15 I feel like the game has lost a lot of the fun it once had, and I spend more time being frustrated with mechanics that just feel broken. I know that I am not alone with most of these complaints, as I have seen comments on a lot of them in the forum, and I am just concerned that they aren't going to be fixed or worked on. I really hope that I am wrong, as I feel like they detract from the game and I just don't have anywhere near as much fun anymore.

The three biggest issues I am concerned with are the new diplomacy system, Liberty Desire, and auto revealing territories.


New Diplomacy:
AI feels like it nonsensically allies random nations for no reason. For an example, I was playing Poland, supported independence of Sweden, helped Sweden in a couple wars, etc. Meanwhile I continue eating Teutons a bit at a time. Sweden has a high opinion of me, around 60 trust, and we have helped each other in wars, including against Teutons. Then without reason, Sweden allies Teutonic Order. Why? Why is my ally consistently allying someone that I clearly do not like? I would understand if they are powerful and they want a good ally, but a Teutonic Order with three provinces is not a good ally. This is akin to the US messaging Great Britain in WWII and saying, "Hi, we know that you and Germany haven't been getting along and have been at war for a year or so, but just a heads up we allied him. But don't worry! We still have your back! Just make sure not to attack or fight him, ok?"

It is also very difficult to do anything as a smaller country, as you need to wait between 10-20 years to call allies into a war, which basically means there is a lot of sitting and waiting, watching Austria, Ming, France, and Ottomans blob to the point that they are unstoppable, since none of them will ever get a coalition. Then a lot of times when you finally do get enough favors, they will not join because it is a 'distant war', 2 provinces away. It does not make the game very fun.

The trust system seems completely pointless as well, with it instantly going away should you get a Personal Union over another country. Now this would make sense if it were a war, but if a country's king dies without an heir and names the king of your country as his successor, why would the government suddenly distrust this new ruler that they have been friends with for the past 200 years?

The same goes for when an alliance breaks. Say Brandenburg goes to war and calls you, Lubeck, in. You get fully sieged and forced out of the war, why does Brandenburg suddenly distrust you? You had no choice in the matter, it's not that you betrayed him, you were 100% and forced out. Or if a war breaks an alliance, now your trust and favors are just gone for no real good reason?


Liberty Desire:
Colonial Nations. They feel like a trap now. We are consistently seeing independent Brazil and US and Mexico in the mid to late 1500s. In a Portugal game as soon as I got a CN in Brazil, he had 38% liberty desire, most of which due to relative strength, all the meanwhile having a much weaker economy and no army. This makes no sense, and colonizers have been completely nerfed, unless they blob out of control. The smaller colonizers get no benefit from the New World, and Portugal can't even use it's bonus tariffs from its ideas because Brazil is never loyal. It makes LD feel very broken and any tariff events or decisions completely pointless and a worthless mechanic, and a lot of the colonizers don't gain power at all before a megablob eats them (IE France eating Iberia).

Personal Unions have the same issue, with them very easily getting an extremely high and bloated 'relative strength to overlord' penalty, which is instantly capitalized by every rival in the game. Now I understand a rival wanting to hurt a rival, but when Iberian Wedding triggers it feels wrong to me to have Ottomans and France support independence within days of Ferdinand saying 'I do', or when a loyal subject allies a disloyal one, guaranteeing the freedom of at least one of them regardless of if the overlord wins the war or not.

Just a small addendum, the 'Economic Base' modifier for diplo vassalizing can be a bit extreme as well, if a country is over 20x the size/develpment of the diplo-vassal target, I hardly think there should be a -53 reason penalty for relative economic base.


Auto-Exploring:
It feels as if explorers and conquistadors are a waste now, as the auto-exploration simply happens too fast. In my last Great Britain game, I was able to colonize the thirteen colonies (again, 7 provinces with 8k army and 30-something liberty desire), be able to view most of the Americas, colonize Africa, and eat a good bottom portion of India by 1540 without hiring a single explorer or conquistador. The speed at which things are auto-revealed just makes both the exploration and Seven Cities mechanics seem like they have been borderline removed, as you cannot use them before everything is explored for you.


In short, I don't want it to seem like I am whining or telling the developers that they are not doing their jobs, but I just feel like these things are seriously detracting from the game that I love playing, and is often bringing a lot more frustration than fun. In the end, the only two questions I have are: Are you guys aware of these things, and is something being done to work on/fix them?

Thank you, Paradox. I appreciate you reading this if you have, and I hope that you reply soon

 

[adam_grif]

Regarding trust / favors, it really depends. My latest BRA -> PRU game (which I can't continue until next patch due to an error that isn't fixed yet causing 100% guaranteed crash to desktop a few days into loading my save ) saw me using Poland as a bludgeoning instrument against the Teutons by promising them land. It may not be as powerful, but it does make sense that they would want something out of it. My only critique would be I wish you could offer things other than just land or favours - imagine promising significant sums of gold for their support, or promising to vote for them as emperor if they helped you attack someone. There is serious potential here but the current mechanics are a bit too simplistic. Nations in reality rarely go to war just because they like someone, usually there is some ulterior motive involved, either pragmatic interest in weakening a rival, or gain of land or riches, or something. In some ways, the favour system is too easy to use over time as long as you have stable allies, as you will always have enough favours and they iwll join all sorts of wars they would have no interest participating in if this was the real world. Like would the Commonwealth in my game really want to honour my call in World War Habsburgs just because they "owed 10 favours"? All I'm after is like one silesian province and to steal a co-beligerent's province near Cologne. It's not a significant cause, and their country is going to get facerolled / sent into decades of debt and misery while my Prussian Space Marines clean up the minor nations and siege them down.

 

[Johan]

I agree that ld and exploration needs tweaking seriously..

 

[Arizal]

As I read you, I feel I have to answer you. I'm anly a regular player, as you are, but as much as I share some of your problems with the game, there are some of your observations I disagree with. Let's begin by where I agree with you :

- I think it is true that you have to wait, maybe too much recently, after numerous modifiers. Be it ADM pts, truce timers or favours, those feel like hardwire blockers which could benefit from being less radical.
- Trust should indeed not decrease as soon as you are no longer allied. If you were forced out of an alliance against your will, or if you just had a PU, there shouldn't be negative effects like that.
- Economic base for vassals also appears to me somewhat extreme.
- Exploration also seems too fast

Now, where I kind of disagree with you :

The situation you initially describe, about Sweden allying the TO, makes perfect sense to me. Even if they are your allies, Sweden has no interest to see you expand on the Baltic shores and eventually becoming a threat to themselves. So they ally your archenemy in the (artificially computed) "hope" that this will prevent the final war which would have destroyed them. If you agree with Sweden on the importance of your alliance and the balance of power in the region, you can keep your alliance with them. If you attack the TO anyway... Take this as an informal warning. The game mechanics make it so that the AI will always join the defender or remain neutral if one of their allies declare war to another of their ally. So this situation only prevents you from finishing off the TO. Sweden would never join the TO against you unless stuck in a web of alliance which would result in them being secondary participants in a war where you also are secondary participant. And if this happens, usually, except if you took them land or the reverse, the alliance is pretty easy to restore.

And there is a workaround about this... If your ally which is guaranteeing your ennemy goes in another war, they might not be willing anymore to keep their commitment. So check the war declaration page from time to time and, if you are lucky, maybe you will be able to declare war to your ennemy without your ally helping him.

About colonies, I feel your pain. Really. I wanted to show the game to my significant other and offered him to play Portugal as I would be more on the frontline playing Castille, and he was threatened by his numerous colonies until the end of the game. Still, I believe that the LD mechanic makes sense. A Pan-american Portuguese empire would have fallen apart before the end of the XVIIIth century if it had been that humongous while having no real way to asert its dominance. The colonies woudl just have been the facto independant because they would have drifted too far away from the metropolis, as happened later with the British Commonwealth. An attempt to keep an high control on those provinces could have resulted in an independance war, such as the American war of independance or the south american independance war.

The game allows for each historical colonizer to have colonies the size they had historically. If they try to colonize too much, then they run into troubles because of their enormous colonial empires. That said, if tariffs are supposed to be a measure of the relative independance of colonies, maybe at 0% they should have next to no LD, at least not until they have more troops than their overlord. And even then they could be content as long as their overlord doesn't block their expansion.

In other words, I believe it should be possible to colonize all of the Americas as one country, but to do that would mean having a very decentralized empire and beating all the other colonists, because our colonists might not share our european PoV as to who should be their allies or their foes. If I am the UK and wants peace with France, but those pesky colonists are trying to invade New France (Canada), then I could have to choose between peace with France or war with my colony. If as Spain they attack my ally (France, for example), the choice would be even more difficult.

So, to summarize, where I disagree with OP :
- Ally allying the ennemy of the player is perfectly okay, and even a smart move from the AI (if they can back it)
- Colonies wanting independance is believable, but the mechanic should be deepened and less inevitable for middle powers. As long as you support your colonies, they shouldn't try to beat you. After all, you are parents.

 

[highsis]

You should player larger countries if playing OPM is boring because you can't call in big allies to beat up your rivals for you. Get smaller allies of your size and use human skills to beat the odds against supernaitons on later stage. I find it very fun.

 

[satyrlord]

There was a topic on this subject a few days ago but it was ignored by Paradox... I think the concerns of OP are justified, there were a lot of my friends who simply stopped playing after the previous patch because they simply got bored or frustrated. The game is simply not fun anymore, I even had my best friend suggesting we should go back to EU 3. I thought it was kind of a ridiculous suggestions at first, but it made me wonder, what was so fun about EU3 that EU4 doesn't have anymore?

 

[DanJonMin]

By and large, I agree with everything OP has said.

In particular, I don't even bother with Colonial Nations any more, all it takes is one smarmy AI nation to take espionage and target you and suddenly your small and entirely dependant colony decides that it's better off alone. I don't think the benefits of CNs make them worth the risk, especially when you can focus Asia instead and get the same, if not more, benefits without the silly liberty desire.

I'd like to see Colonial Nations contribute more and revolt less to make them a viable alternative. At the moment the only reason to bother with America is for map painting purposes.

Meant entirely as constructive feedback and I'm a big fan of the concept of CNs, I just don't quite think they're working at the moment.

 

[Darkath]

I agree that ld and exploration needs tweaking seriously..

With mare nostrum we can share maps with other countries, won't that make exploration even easier ?

 

[Edmon]

Agree with OP 100%.

 

[Gball]

I agree that ld and exploration needs tweaking seriously..

One thing:

LD should NOT affect tarrifs.

I have no blimey clue why that is a thing currently but, as it stands, disloyal CNs suddenly can get away with paying 0 tarrifs? That is simply nonsensical.

 

[DanJonMin]

One thing:

LD should NOT affect tarrifs.

I have no blimey clue why that is a thing currently but, as it stands, disloyal CNs suddenly can get away with paying 0 tarrifs? That is simply nonsensical.

Hah, another good point - CNs angry that tariffs are too high, but don't pay any tariffs... EU4 community has detected a Circular Reference, this game may not work as intended.

"We are angry because official tariff rates are too high, even though you haven't collected any tariffs in 100 years, because we're angry that official tariff rates are too high..."

 

[witchveil]

I love EU4. I love all the expansions. I love how the game is still being improved and developed even after its been out for nearly 3 years. I love how the devs are keen to listen to and interact with the players/community.

But I do wish we could have a mega bug fixing patch. Not just the patch we get after a new DLC that fixes new bugs but more long term bugs like the ones mentioned above and probably quite a few others that are frequently mentioned on these forums.

 

[Voigt]

I agree that Exploration and Colonization needs tweeking.

Personal Unions in general need and will get a rework.

About Colonies breaking free, this just has one big reason. It isn't Strength to the Overlord, but instead extremly high Tarrifs. You can watch this, in normal games if you tag switch to a colonizer later on, or in Ironman if you FullAnnex one and get all of their Colonial Nations. Their CN have like 70% LD to me, even I am much stronger than their former Overlord, and that is because 60%+ Tarifs.

Luckily you can still lower them without a cost, so you can go down to 10%, getting a little bit of money but mostly have a content CN which gives you alot of Tradepower.

Lastly about Diplomacy, this also happend before, but now you have the tools to do something about that, but noone uses them.
Set your attitude to your current and future enemies. The system sometimes does this with hostile or rivaly, but often enough "you" still see them as neutral.

Just set them as hostile, and your allies are more likly to not ally them, and your Vassals will fabricate claims.
Also I think this has influence if your ally calls you in a Offensive Calls to arm.
Just set their Vital Interest as Hostile to you, and your ally will call you more often, and you get more favours for your own wars.

 

[Tript]

Why is it that 'support independance' doens't cost any money or maintance? It's right now fairly simple to break free as an cn or for instance, holland from burgundy with the help of france, austria en denmark. In real history for example, France supported USA and went nearly broke because of that (besides the financial mess they already created)

 

[Grand Historian]

All good points; I've actually been holding off on playing Castile for a while now because of two of them combined.

 

[maltsefalcon204]

My one gripe playing a nation in a PU.

It's either slowly wait to be eaten or break free.

Also adding to that, I'd love to see when the lesser partner of the PU when their is high liberty desire that they start doing their own things.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nono, Turkish - Chinese alliances in 1540 are perfectly reasonable to combat their obvious mutual threats and/or help each other expand .

What's that you say? It makes sense because Russia threatens both? I'm afraid not my friend, for Muscovy and the Ottomans also remain stalwart allies (and Uzbek still blocks Muscovy anyway).

It's not just anti-player bias either. As Morocco, I was able to ally Castile and use their land as a launching point to conquer Portugal's Iberian provinces in 1.15. Castile later broke the alliance (an 80+ trust alliance, mind you) because it went "wants your provinces". Okay, sure, wanting land in Iberia makes se...NOPE! It didn't want land in Iberia.

It wanted land in interior West Africa that I'd had for a few decades.

Yeah, alliances aren't working well.

 

[freedavebrown]

Liberty Desire and Support Independence are actually just broken. After LD goes above 50, the game doesn't seem to check whether it is back below 50 for purposes of Support Independence until the end of the month. This means that you can get a warning about LD at 54%, pay it down to 44%, THEN have someone support the independence of the subject pegging it back to 100%.

If PDX is too lazy to fix the fact that the AI can support the independence of loyal subjects they could at least make the warning flag trigger at 40% not 50% so that it is possible to address and not just simply a flag that means someone is about to support independence of your subject and there is literally nothing you can possibly do to stop it.

 

[jkchart]

I definitely agree with the LD rework. I just finished a game as Italy with nearly 2000 development and half of the mediterranean, but my single new world colony and only subject had 55% LD because of "relative strength" (all of La Plata), but I had an army at least 3X the size of theirs and way more development and I was consistently forced to remain with a 5% tariff and spending 20 prestige for a 10% reduction in LD for the last century. The LD mechanics went from underpowered to overpowered and there's really not enough depth in the colonial LD system, even though it is better than the original situation where colonies would never ever revolt...but this still hasn't deterred me from colonizing since I guess I'm masochistic about expansion

 

[tom025]

Completely agree with the OP.
I would even add that development need a little buff, because right now its well too costly.
Im not saying that develop a province should be cheaper than coring, but transform a province from 3 to 6 development cost around 150 monarch points if its grassland (its well too much).
Instead coring a 3 development province cost 30 adm points and 60 admin point for a 6 development cost.
Develop a province should have a base cost of 40 or 45, not 50.