The game is...well...boring

[Yugoslavs]

I must agree with people that have said that this is best AI since release of EU4. AI on Very Hard is absolutely fantastic.

If OP wants challenge he should go for achievements with Ragusa or Candar on Very Hard. It is just brutal, especially former, since Ragusa has that 20 provinces in states limit for merchant republics.

 

[bbqftw]

It's the bonus that makes computer Austria, France, and Spain literally immune to AE if they take Influence (fairly likely) and hold the controllership (crapshoot) or get the AE Impact reduction event.

Screw that noise.

so?

Player will almost always find way to take 100% warscore against big countries, I would not mind if AI does too, except they end up attacking guys like HRE / Burgundy instead of players's selectively picked "no one cares about" countries.

 

[Violent AI]

Perhaps I'm part of a dying breed of Paradox players, but I'd just like a fair and square war against an equally strong neighbour, fight a couple of close battles, try some unlikely attacks across that unguarded mountain range, grab a few provinces if I win, cede a few if I lose. Sadly, what I get now is rather a WWII simulation, where virtually all balanced conflicts turn into a total war of annihilation that usually cripples the winner for quite a while and all but destroys the loser.

If you want fair, I'd suggest you *mod* the game to set main AI trait as fair
Edit the file Program Files(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis IV\common\ruler_personalities\00_core.txt

For just personality as below, remove the adm=6 and set factor = 1000 . Any new rulers will get the just personality which means they will start fair wars against equal strength nations, not gank up weaklings, and play fairly



just_personality = {
#personality_events.10
ruler_allow = {
allow = {
NOT = { ruler_has_personality = cruel_personality }
}

chance = {
modifier = {
factor = 1000
}
}
}

heir_allow = {
allow = {
NOT = { heir_has_personality = cruel_personality }
}

chance = {
modifier = {
factor = 1000
}
}
}

consort_allow = {
allow = {
NOT = { consort_has_personality = cruel_personality }
}

chance = {
modifier = {
factor = 1000
}
}
}

 

[Randwyck]

I've read the whole thread.
As a side note, it's absolutely fascinating how many people responding in this thread completely miss the OP's point (sometimes quite rudely so). I mean all those suggestions to play on VH with some challenging start + some mods, maybe high and drunk, and also to use your imagination.
I don't see this as being any solution to the problem that OP highlights - the games have indeed become more punishing, with arguably less variety than before. Guerilla tactics do not work, wars become total wars of annihilation, all this forces you to play carefully and opportunistically, and this can become boring and less satisfying.
I'm not saying the game if getting worse - the AI is great now, I really enjoy how smart it is (it's really obvious if you watch some earlier playthroughs on YouTube). But the options I as a player now have are indeed more limited. I'm playing as Elsass now on 1.18, this is my 5th attempt, the previous 4 were on Iron Man and ended after a single mistake. I remember having really great playthroughs as Byzantium in EU3 and earlier versions of EU4, challenging and satisfying. Would it be possible on the current version? Given my current OPM experience, I doubt it. More realistic, yes, but less satisfying as well.

 

[bbqftw]

That is kind of the nature of an OPM though, you make one mistake against a rival that wants to annex you and you are dead. And the smaller you are the more relatively damaging losing any given war is.

I am not sure how you would propose to fix the problem. There are still handicaps with which you can challenge yourself as a major.

I also am not sure what people consider "game ruining battles" -- I've gotten stackwiped as OPMs on certain occasions in do or die situations. You just shrug, take a few loans, and be more careful with your troops the next time around.

 

[DerMaulwurf]

You are being downvoted for the thread title. But that isn't the only reason.

You're also only partially right. Yes, using big allies as your sledge hammer is the easiest and safest way. It is also the slowest and least rewarding way of doing things.

It is still very much possible to fight without allies against larger enemies, if you have favorable terrain, if you can secure a temporary tech advantage or by going balls out with loans. Or by simply being oppotunistic. Of course that's more of a risk. But that's risk against reward for you. It can also go horrifically wrong, but that's just a restart.

The game would be boring if the safe approach was the only possible one. But if you have more interesting options and chose not to take them, that's your own fault.

 

[Sol_Invictus]

I've read the whole thread.
As a side note, it's absolutely fascinating how many people responding in this thread completely miss the OP's point (sometimes quite rudely so). I mean all those suggestions to play on VH with some challenging start + some mods, maybe high and drunk, and also to use your imagination.
I don't see this as being any solution to the problem that OP highlights - the games have indeed become more punishing, with arguably less variety than before. Guerilla tactics do not work, wars become total wars of annihilation, all this forces you to play carefully and opportunistically, and this can become boring and less satisfying.
I'm not saying the game if getting worse - the AI is great now, I really enjoy how smart it is (it's really obvious if you watch some earlier playthroughs on YouTube). But the options I as a player now have are indeed more limited. I'm playing as Elsass now on 1.18, this is my 5th attempt, the previous 4 were on Iron Man and ended after a single mistake. I remember having really great playthroughs as Byzantium in EU3 and earlier versions of EU4, challenging and satisfying. Would it be possible on the current version? Given my current OPM experience, I doubt it. More realistic, yes, but less satisfying as well.

Thank you. Always a pleasure when someone actually reads and understands what you've written.

You are being downvoted for the thread title. But that isn't the only reason.

You're also only partially right. Yes, using big allies as your sledge hammer is the easiest and safest way. It is also the slowest and least rewarding way of doing things.

It is still very much possible to fight without allies against larger enemies, if you have favorable terrain, if you can secure a temporary tech advantage or by going balls out with loans. Or by simply being oppotunistic. Of course that's more of a risk. But that's risk against reward for you. It can also go horrifically wrong, but that's just a restart.

The game would be boring if the safe approach was the only possible one. But if you have more interesting options and chose not to take them, that's your own fault.

I agree with you to some extent. I'm pretty certain that, since I'm playing EU IV only occassionally now, there are quite a few viable strategies I'm unaware of. But you already mentioned risk and reward, and my impression is that, right now, if you have limited knowledge of the game, this balance between risk and reward is skewed to a point where it's no fun anymore to take the risks because, if you forget about a single factor, things will go terribly wrong for you.

It's ok if the game slaps you on the wrist when you overdo it, so to say, and perhaps a bit more than that. But if it hits you straight in the face with a mallet, it does kill the fun rather quickly. And, as I said already, the game even does that to itself. It's not only me as a player who can and will collapse after one overly ambitious war, the same goes for AI nations who just vanish after one ill decision. And that feels neither plausible nor satisfying to me, but simply arbitrary.

 

[YuriiH]

bla-bla-bla I've spent 2000 hours on the game bla-bla-bla
bla-bla-bla The game is boring bla-bla-bla
LOL WHAT?! You have free 2000 hours of life to spend on a boring game?! I envy you

 

[Sabotage13]

Doomstacks have always been a problem and show no signs of going away barring a massive overhaul of land combat.

 

[Sabotage13]

I don't think it's really a complaint about AI being too good. More to do with the mechanics that have been added. The new fort changes aren't that great. The favor system is alright but I think the problem is that it makes small nations with tricky starts very tedious to play. Every patch is pretty much a new restrictive mechanic.

Yea the game has been on a steady slope of making smaller countries more tedious (not difficult, just tedious) to play for the last couple of expansions.

 

[Korashy]

If you want big gains, you need to go big. Hyper aggressive starts are something that should be practiced. Sure they won't always work, but they will shave decades off what you can accomplish.

My biggest gripe with all of this is rather how 2 bad die rolls in a row are basically GG at the start.

 

[GraafVonR]

For me, the problem is all the economic, colonisation, strategic part of the game are now pointless:
To win you have to focus on 2 point :
> discipline
> military tradition (and powerful commander)
You can have a colonial and trade empire, being rich.if your army is not powerful enough, you will be crush and you will loose everything thanks to the liberty desire.
Now having a big disciplind army allow you to do whatever you want. Why being rich and having colonies when you can be at war with ton's of debt and be refund at the end, while crushing your enemies ?

 

[doktorstick]

bla-bla-bla I've spent 2000 hours on the game bla-bla-bla
bla-bla-bla The game is boring bla-bla-bla
LOL WHAT?! You have free 2000 hours of life to spend on a boring game?! I envy you

In other words, since release, 1.711 hours / day (or about 12 hours / weekend). Probably the hours-played is much smaller; the launcher window counts as "playing" so leaving it open while working or sleeping racks up the time.

 

[FireKahuna]

An optional 'fall of Empires' and/or 'events' option would be good. The latter being random things that can throw a spanner in the works of even the most powerful of empires - maybe a religious heresy that splits the empire into pieces through meta rebel spawns. Independence movements that have real power. Nations not being able to send 100K troops off to a far away war without them all dying of disease or just melting back into the countryside.

There is definitely a trend for agglomeration and blobbing in the game that makes the whole experiences a bit less interesting. So more in-game targets would be a great addition. Getting x amount of trade nodes triggers something good. Getting more than x triggers off a growing set of reprisals. Developing the capital. Internal pressure to reform (and thus reducing manpower since less people will serve) would be good too.

Means more realistic usage and hiring of mercenaries come into play.

This hits the nail on the head. Empires don't 'Rise and Fall'. EU4 has not institutionalised internal struggle as a constant challenge for the player and AI. Instead, its buff stability to 3, and relax. Rebels are a poor implementation, and autonomy is far too abstract. The only challenge is Overextension, which is stupid (suddenly your entire realm things its a terrible place to live and be ruled under because you added more people to it...) and still a consequence of war.

Which means, if your not at war, and you don't want to colonise, what is there really to do?

Paradox needs to make stability more of a balancing act than a mana top-up. Add entities within your realm (duchies, kingdoms (Spain), free cities with varying levels of autonomy (rights and privileges) that require active gameplay to keep in-line, rather than delegating everything to the 'autonomy' stat. Let these entities sometimes revert to a vassal due to extremely high autonomy. Centralisation should be the process of absorbing internal entities and retraction of rights/privileges from the provinces. Make the States and Territories mechanic have 'States' as an actual in-game unit, that the player can view via UI, has region-level modifiers and trickle down autonomy. Let them see the value of the State (economy, trade, manpower) and local resistance movements. Use states more often to shape independence movements and break-away parts of the realm. And use these States to represent lands of internal entities (duchies, kings in union, merchant cities with extreme rights, etc).

Make the breaking of realms under pressure a larger threat, add more internal challenge, so that giant blobs aren't always the end-game, even for the player.

 

[Viperswhip]

The AI is easier to beat now, they don't tend to stack as much, meaning if you stack you can just wipe out army after army like whack a mole. The true key now is being able to assault a keep in the mountains so good siege ability is huge as is morale.

TW you can just corner camp if you want to get corny with it.

If you are bored, pick a more active country.

 

[bbqftw]

I actually wondered how viable assaulting was. Pretty sure the attacker casualties is also factored by defensiveness so you will need more guys to assault a mountain fort.

 

[alexti]

Guerilla tactics do not work, wars become total wars of annihilation, all this forces you to play carefully and opportunistically, and this can become boring and less satisfying.

Would you find it more entertaining if you could carelessly declare on anyone and still be guaranteed to win?

I'm not saying the game if getting worse - the AI is great now, I really enjoy how smart it is (it's really obvious if you watch some earlier playthroughs on YouTube). But the options I as a player now have are indeed more limited. I'm playing as Elsass now on 1.18, this is my 5th attempt, the previous 4 were on Iron Man and ended after a single mistake. I remember having really great playthroughs as Byzantium in EU3 and earlier versions of EU4, challenging and satisfying. Would it be possible on the current version? Given my current OPM experience, I doubt it. More realistic, yes, but less satisfying as well.

Byzantium is still quite challenging and entertaining. At least on VH. Well, for someone really good, maybe it's not.

For me, the problem is all the economic, colonisation, strategic part of the game are now pointless:
To win you have to focus on 2 point :
> discipline
> military tradition (and powerful commander)
You can have a colonial and trade empire, being rich.if your army is not powerful enough, you will be crush and you will loose everything thanks to the liberty desire.
Now having a big disciplind army allow you to do whatever you want. Why being rich and having colonies when you can be at war with ton's of debt and be refund at the end, while crushing your enemies ?

You can be rich, have colonies and be at war with even bigger debt than you could have had otherwise But generally, I agree, after you got past initial expansion phase, you don't need to have particularly good strategy to win.

 

[Michael Kim]

Because the game lacks the thing a good game needs more than anything: reward. The sense that you achieved something unexpected, that you've beaten the odds.

So you've earned the Three Mountains achievement I believe?

If you want to achieve anything as a small nation in the current game state, you need 2 things. Strong allies, and lots of patience. Lots and lots of patience. Boy, so much patience.

The essential rule for the game is that you should never, ever, ever start a war that you haven't already won before it started.

Aren't you supposed to do these? This is a strategy game. You need patience. You need calculation and preparation. If you don't want them, you should probably just turn to another genre.

Plus, a quote from Sun Tsu's Art of War for you:

是故胜兵先胜而后求战，败兵先战而后求胜。

Thus victorious armies win first and then go to battle, while defeated armies go to battle first and then try to win.

 

[DerMaulwurf]

[...]



I agree with you to some extent. I'm pretty certain that, since I'm playing EU IV only occassionally now, there are quite a few viable strategies I'm unaware of. But you already mentioned risk and reward, and my impression is that, right now, if you have limited knowledge of the game, this balance between risk and reward is skewed to a point where it's no fun anymore to take the risks because, if you forget about a single factor, things will go terribly wrong for you.

It's ok if the game slaps you on the wrist when you overdo it, so to say, and perhaps a bit more than that. But if it hits you straight in the face with a mallet, it does kill the fun rather quickly. And, as I said already, the game even does that to itself. It's not only me as a player who can and will collapse after one overly ambitious war, the same goes for AI nations who just vanish after one ill decision. And that feels neither plausible nor satisfying to me, but simply arbitrary.

Alright, there is one point with which I definitely agree. EU4 is biased towards total war with most wars being all or nothing affairs. Ironically excepting great power on great power wars, because a single war is rarely enough to completely turn the balance. One should just keep in mind, that if there are limits on what players and AI lose in defeat, it will also limit what players can gain in war.

But to be fair, that isn't what you've written in the OP. I think there are several things with which you can reasonably disagree. And therefore you are being downvoted, because people understand, but plainly don't share your point.

[...]

The thing is, I can't enjoy it anymore. Because the game lacks the thing a good game needs more than anything: reward. The sense that you achieved something unexpected, that you've beaten the odds.

[...]

If you want to achieve anything as a small nation in the current game state, you need 2 things. Strong allies, and lots of patience. Lots and lots of patience. Boy, so much patience.

The essential rule for the game is that you should never, ever, ever start a war that you haven't already won before it started. If there's even the slightest doubt that your enemy is clearly weaker than you, don't start the war.

[...]

The first bolded thing is a bit ambivalent. I do think that the possible reward is there. But you do need more background knowledge than typical and especially the documentation isn't always good, unless you're willing to dig into the wiki.

The second one is demonstratably false. You can grow into a great power as a minor nation without ever having allies larger than yourself.

The third one is probably a matter of taste. Just personally, I'm not bothered with restarting if the initial moves don't work out. And once you've outgrown your origins you actually can survive a loss.

 

[TheAllHighest]

I tried again as Denmark but gave up. I am very confused. The AI is much better, yet your PUs and Vassals continue to act as though they are dumb. I put them to "Work closely" strategy, ticked "Friendly's join army" and occasionally also ticked a province I was besieging as one of the their objectives. Despite all of this Sweden and Norway refused to move (yes they were at 0% independence desire). Its frustrating now to wait ten years for an opportunity to attack, then when you attack get beaten up because your PUs and vassals refuse to engage for no good reason. Its worse because you anticipate that they will help. I practically played this game every day for the last two years - my partner hates this game!

Now I think I might have to give up!