The Great and Forever Disabled Expansions

[Edmon]

I wouldn't be here if I didn't really like this game, but I am kind of incredulous at how every "lets play", strategy guide and youtube video related to doing anything difficult on EUIV always seems to start with these statements:

"So, for X achievement, I'm going to disable El Doraldo because I want to explore manually and I'm also disabling Common Sense because I don't want the AI to develop and development is useless for human players anyway."

Or words to those effect.

Maybe it would good if you could somehow fix these expansions so that people actually wanted to enable and play with them. As it stands, especially with common sense, no-one (serious gamer and/or minmaxer, not roleplayer) ever has them enabled so you can't really get an idea for how to play with them from other good players. This is largely because development is an absolute non-starter for a good player, they will never have any points to waste on it.

I guess it's hard to tick a box that says "Allow development (AI ONLY)". If there were things that a good player could take advantage of, then maybe people would enable it. It has also been said before, the AI skytopia's in the middle of nowhere are the height of silliness.

 

[Kwami]

I'm not sure why you equate "nobody" with "serious gamer and/or minmaxer". I would bet that the vast, vast majority of players don't fit that definition and enjoy playing CS with development enabled.

 

[HansBaer]

What are you talking about? Path did a Ryukyu Onetag WC with common sense. I myself did a standard TTM, too. Every achievement can be done with every DLC enabled.
I usually don't say that but those YouTubers apparently need to ltp. Development is one of the best features introduced since launch. If you can't deal with it, ltp or set yourself smaller goals.

Also, WC games are a mere fraction of all games. You sound like it's the one and only goal a player can have.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I leave the DLCs on typically, even for videos.

Common sense is a mixed bag; development sucks but if you're not playing Ottomans or something the subject interactions are really powerful compared to not having them, while development scales down in ADM efficiency times.

 

[Wizzington]

Ooor we don't really care that much if 0.0001% of players are willing to go this far for achievements.

We're going to fix it so you can't toggle expansion on and off repeatedly in a single save game though.

 

[Daddl]

People who do that only because they want their game to be easier would propably also roll back to version 1.0 if they can't make it otherwise.

 

[wingzero890]

16.8% of EU4 owners have the royal marriage achievement. It's safe to say most people don't care about achievements and ironman.

 

[Edmon]

16.8% of EU4 owners have the royal marriage achievement. It's safe to say most people don't care about achievements and ironman.

That's a sad statistic, it basically implies that only 16.8% of people who bought EUIV actually bothered to play it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What are you talking about? Path did a Ryukyu Onetag WC with common sense. I myself did a standard TTM, too. Every achievement can be done with every DLC enabled.
I usually don't say that but those YouTubers apparently need to ltp. Development is one of the best features introduced since launch. If you can't deal with it, ltp or set yourself smaller goals.

Also, WC games are a mere fraction of all games. You sound like it's the one and only goal a player can have.

The Ottoman 1-tag was not done by someone who needs to "learn to play". He was going for a record, and got it. His strategy specifically made common sense detrimental, but the conditions that made such the case are not typical (not all starts are Ottomans pursuing record 1-tag).

Ooor we don't really care that much if 0.0001% of players are willing to go this far for achievements.

We're going to fix it so you can't toggle expansion on and off repeatedly in a single save game though.

If you don't care that much, why spend time "fixing" something that ".0001%" of players do? The first and second sentence don't seem to mesh well together. There's plenty of stuff in the game that has an impact on closer to 100% of players.

 

[eon47]

That's a sad statistic, it basically implies that only 16.8% of people who bought EUIV actually bothered to play it.

...Or that only 16.8 percent have ever played ironman.

 

[HansBaer]

The Ottoman 1-tag was not done by someone who needs to "learn to play". He was going for a record, and got it. His strategy specifically made common sense detrimental, but the conditions that made such the case are not typical (not all starts are Ottomans pursuing record 1-tag).

Ok, i wasn't precise enough. If someone needs to disable some DLCs to be able to do a WC or whatever and complains about how CS made the game harder, it sounds like a LTP issue.
If someone just does it for funsies or records, sure why not?

 

[Seelmeister]

...Or that only 16.8 percent have ever played ironman.

Or that 83.2 per cent of players only play Ironman as Venice.

 

[eon47]

Or that 83.2 per cent of players only play Ironman as Venice.

Ah, that must be it.

 

[Subbak]

That's a sad statistic, it basically implies that only 16.8% of people who bought EUIV actually bothered to play it.

Some could also not play on Ironman, or not play in 1444, or only play with custom nations, or only play with non-graphic mods.

EDIT: Or, as poster above me pointed out, only play republics and theocracies. Venice and PS are pretty good...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ok, i wasn't precise enough. If someone needs to disable some DLCs to be able to do a WC or whatever and complains about how CS made the game harder, it sounds like a LTP issue.
If someone just does it for funsies or records, sure why not?

I mostly agree with you. CS made Buddhism really unpleasant for example, so I couldn't fault someone for disabling it if wanting to use such nations. Once I got it, I've left it on...but then in a fast White Elephant run I hit -100% Karma with blinding speed, even taking every positive event and trying to use the free core returns. Short of constantly feeding an ally land --> return core as betrayal balancing I can't see a way to keep Karma decent, and so I just went Sunni . For that kind of stuff it's annoying.

I also find the notion that turning DLC on/off is something that needs to be fixed as strange. Quite a few issues with the game that are more ubiquitous to all players haven't so much as been acknowledged (Ming ignoring LA FL bug, provinces taken vs coring UI lie, diploannex cost UI lie, access to basic gameplay information like current combat width without being in battle already to name a few). Numerous reports on those inside and outside the bug report subforum, and we get confirmation on a "fix" affecting something that ".0001%" of players, and only if they do it on purpose? That doesn't make sense.

 

[RELee]

Never played ironman. Don't care about achievements. Last I heard, game only plays properly if connected through steam while playing. Spending all my time playing Victoria anyways.

 

[Elfryc]

That's a sad statistic, it basically implies that only 16.8% of people who bought EUIV actually bothered to play it.

I'm within the 83.2% that never played Ironman.

When launching a game, my aim is to take pleasure by managing a country, and I could not imagine playing it as any form of competition against anybody, either in game or outside of it, and spend even 3 seconds for a comparison of my statistics with anybody else -- although I think that's a good point that one may make this choice if pleasure may be found this way.

So, how may you even presume I never played EU4?

 

[WSnova]

That's a sad statistic, it basically implies that only 16.8% of people who bought EUIV actually bothered to play it.

Nah, in this case not because you can play with no achievements. Ironman with its constant saving is sometimes too annoying.

But yeah, seeing how in other games you see that the minority gets the milestone achievements seems people either really like playing in Offline mode (why?) or that they buy stuff and don´t even bother playing it.

 

[RELee]

people either really like playing in Offline mode (why?)

It messes with Johan's statistics gathering.

 

[josh127]

Maybe it would good if you could somehow fix these expansions so that people actually wanted to enable and play with them. As it stands, especially with common sense, no-one (serious gamer and/or minmaxer, not roleplayer) ever has them enabled so you can't really get an idea for how to play with them from other good players. This is largely because development is an absolute non-starter for a good player, they will never have any points to waste on it.

For that they would need to add a custom game setup options screen at the beginning that would allow you to change a lot of the numbers to your liking. Unfortunately, this is something Paradox has never shown interest in doing.

You will have development points at a few times. For instance if you're not teching because you're westernizing/westernizing soon, you'll end up with points you need to dump. However, as a feature development wasn't added for someone like me (or apparently you) who want to play a conquest game. To us, it is just an added cost that raises coring cost and delays us from further conquests. In my Wu game, I've had to sit around multiple times because I'm simply out of ADM.

But that goes back to my previous point. Since different people do want to play the game with different goals in mind, why isn't there an expansive custom setup screen? A lot of games have them.