Root of all Problems of EU4

[loveslater]

My answer to your first statement is that yes, most of the Historical advocates hold such views. There are many angry outbursts proving such a few pages back. They seek consistent historical outcomes in their games. That, my friend, can't be done in this game. Hence, the reason why it is a futile crusade to appease them.

My answer to your second statement is that you should not appeal to a logical fallacy to support your position. Reductio ad absurdum.

Why argue to defend a position that no one holds? The complaints aren't about ahistorical outcomes, they're about ahistorical rules governing the gameplay. You might as well add nuclear weapons to EU, considering how poorly it models the challenges a nation would have faced in the covered era.

 

[Chamboozer]

Claiming that 'historical advocates' want to see only historical outcomes in the game has always been, and will always continue to be, a straw man. Such people are miniscule in number.

 

[loveslater]

They certainly made themselves heard in this thread

Claiming that 'historical advocates' want to see only historical outcomes in the game has always been, and will always continue to be, a straw man. Such people are miniscule in number.

 

[Chamboozer]

One would expect them to do so in a thread specifically targeted against them. But even then, the vast majority of 'historical advocates' here aren't expressing the views you seem to be accusing them of.

 

[nitroholic]

There's a difference between historical determinism and historical plausibility you seem to misunderstand. I don't think I've ever seen someone on these forums argue that EU IV should be a straight simulation.

As someone who enjoys the historical nature of Paradox's games - because that is, in my opinion, their main selling point - the argument is rather that the game mechanics should emulate the driving forces of history at the time, allowing for plausible divergence.

 

[GC13]

They certainly made themselves heard in this thread

Would you care to pick out your favorites? Because I saw China mentioned as something that was considered to be an argument in favor of the game moving lockstep in with history, but it completely misses the point: the mechanics currently allow European nations to casually send small detachments to Asia to conquer China whenever they please, when that simply wouldn't have worked in the real world. You can say "Manchu" all you want, but fact of the matter is that China is very poorly modeled and is far too easy for anyone to conquer without even needing to wait for a rebellion.

 

[rebelde]

People seems so focused on plausibility regarding expansion by conquest that they ignore the plausibility of everything else. Colonizing is too easy due to lack of logistic and fleet requirements (all you need is one port in range, 850 diplo points and 1 ship), maintaining colonial nations without having them rebel is too easy and there should be penalties for having too many of them, money is irrelevant because everything cost magical abstract monarch points, some republic mechanics make no sense, randomness of PUs and lack of mechanics to break it up, culture art and innovation are irrelevant because war is the only viable option to gain prestige, deterministic national ideas give you a disadvantage if you want to play a certain nation in a different way than "it's supposed to", deterministic events (Iberian wedding, Burgundian inheritance) and missions (any country specific mission giving free claims or CBs) force historical outcomes regardless of the game situation, often inducing AI to break long lasting alliances, non HRE members becoming emperor and I could go on.

Everyone on the forum screaming "OMG blobbing and maintaining big empires is too easy nerf vassal feeding, put back 1.3 coalitions, nerf this, nerf that", no one asking to fix all those other broken or too abstract or implausible aspects of the game. So do you really want a plausible game, or a game that works the way you like?

 

[boozermonkey]

Historicity is not the root of all problems in EU4. When I play, I want my decisions to affect the countries around me. The rest of the world is supposed to behave historically. It's not nice to discover an all-Aztec America, or a Vijayanagara China. Historical deviation is for me, not for the AI!

Not a huge thing there. As Mali I dominated Afrika. When the Portuguese colonized an adjoining province I Westernized as soon as they cored. When they attacked I was already well above their tech level and I put them in a hurt locker. After that I invaded Spain, France, and Portugal mainland and took about half of spain. I will search the history books for that one. Don't think I will find it though.

 

[Jango40]

This game is slowly becoming as shitty as EU2 was. It's only getting worse. Historicity is the only thing that matters. Limitations everywhere.
Back to EU3.

 

[Beagá]

Claiming that 'historical advocates' want to see only historical outcomes in the game has always been, and will always continue to be, a straw man. Such people are miniscule in number.

Indeed, but straw men use is in such widespread use that soon the world will run out of hay

What some people here fail to understand is that the game is based on history and just as countries in history did have limitations, so should they here. I do think that EU Always relied too much on external rather than internal factors to stop conquest, and that is one of its major flaws.

Also considering all the screenshots of huge blobs, I think some people should look at the mirror to understand why they don´t blob instead of Always blaming the game.

 

[saegoto]

That honestly doesn't happen in EU4. I don't feel like I'm in the Modern Age. I feel like I'm playing a boardgame, with its own set of rules, arbitrary restrictions and ways to make things happen. All that makes sense (sometimes) ingame, but it has no actual connection to History.

The problem is that if you're not expanding in EU4, you have no game left to play. That is the root problem of EU.

I enjoy EU IV in it's current state, but I'd most certainly love to see more representations of internal empire management, because these are just laughable at the moment. There's simply nothing to do while at peace, which means you have to expand all the time.

I think the reason is that player has 90% control of everything. Player is not a ruler. Player IS A COUNTRY. There is no SOCIETY that would have needs, ideas, requests, beliefs. The player wouldn't determine them but should ADAPT to them having various options to choose from.

EU4 is not about modern age country. EU4 is board game about conquest. The time period seems to be random. Just get as many province as you can thourgh 400 years. This is all sad and disapointing.

 

[grommile]

This game is slowly becoming as shitty as EU2 was. It's only getting worse. Historicity is the only thing that matters.

AI minors in Southeast Asia can Westernize, AI Castile can fall under a personal union with the Grand Principality of Moscow, AI Burgundy can turn into the terror of Central Europe, and the meatbag can exceed Trajan's borders as Byzantium; casual inspection clearly reveals the claim "Historicity is the only thing that matters." to be false on its face.

 

[Beagá]

Man why you do even waste time, those people already found their "truth".

 

[loveslater]

Someone needs to speak out against the insanity here. Hence, my original post.

 

[Beagá]

There is no insanity here, only people with different expectations of what the game should be and how fast they should blob. As Grommile said you can do TONS of ahistorical stuff. Your POV doesn´t hold.

 

[Nicram]

The historical mode in eu4 is soo bad. Where is french rev.? religion revolt in england? usa revolt? ukraine revolt? bohemia/husit revolt?

 

[hwoosh]

The historical mode in eu4 is soo bad. Where is french rev.? religion revolt in england? usa revolt? ukraine revolt? bohemia/husit revolt?

1. There's no historical ‘mode’, there's just the game
2. All the things you mention happen regularly in-game ...

 

[potatot]

I have held off on buying this game, and at this point I see no reason to buy it. All of bad gamey aspects of EU3 are still present, like the cores mechanism affecting everything. The new trade system seems neat, but it does not look like it works as it should.

 

[GC13]

Everyone on the forum screaming "OMG blobbing and maintaining big empires is too easy nerf vassal feeding, put back 1.3 coalitions, nerf this, nerf that", no one asking to fix all those other broken or too abstract or implausible aspects of the game. So do you really want a plausible game, or a game that works the way you like?

It's way too late for EU4, but considering EU3 and the sales it's gotten I rather doubt EU5 will be any better. It doesn't matter how much effort they put into a game in the series, I don't think Paradox will ever bring their A-game to a game as long as it's EU, as it would involve completely changing the gameplay.

 

[Chamboozer]

2. All the things you mention happen regularly in-game ...

There's a French Revolution event, but the expansion mechanics prevent anything even remotely close to Napoleon's conquests from being possible. There's a Protestant Reformation, but the game has no way at all to represent the conflict between Puritans, Anglicans, and Scottish Presbyterians that helped bring about the English Civil War (let alone the conflict between King and Parliament). USA I can't comment on since I don't have Conquest of Paradise. The Cossack phenomenon isn't represented in the game aside from a Zaporozhia tag which hardly counts for anything. There's no Hussite religion aside from a generic 'heresy' that can appear anywhere, and Bohemia begins the game in the same position as any other Catholic country. Not all of these are necessarily 'essential' elements of the game, but the fact remains that they don't "happen regularly" in a manner resembling history.

Really, I think most 'history' people aren't upset about historical deviation as much as they are upset that the historical results are actually not possible most of the time under the current system, which is most apparent in the first two examples.