The Great and Forever Disabled Expansions

[TheMeInTeam]

I just feel sad for you...

Indeed, I feel sad for those that consider vassal feeding an exploit against developer statements that it's WAD and against evidence that it's WAD in-game such as AoW, liberty desire, and annexation costs constraining it.

But not too sad. Only a little bit sad.

 

[yerm]

Heck, I'm not near as fluent with the game mechanics as some and if something isn't behaving as I expect it to, I quit the game and reload the save "just in case" it is the type of bug you point out. Sometimes it still doesn't work (because my expectation was wrong); sometimes it fixes it (because I was right).

The point is, the game has trained me to do this because of its bugs and opaque/dishonest UI.

There's a big difference between a reset and a reload. It doesn't sound like you are undoing events, rather, you are simply resetting the game state. Ironman mode is NOT a one setting mode, it is a one save mode, so resetting the game state does not violate the clearly stated rules. However justifiable it is to do so, resetting to offset a regency or undo a misclick because of popup spam DOES violate the plain English of ironman mode. There is a difference.

Personally, I will reload a regency but not a bad monarch/heir RNG stat roll. I will reload a bad enough misclick and forgotten attrition-sunk ships, but not a bad decision or a lost naval battle. If I played ironman mode, I would still do these things... and call myself an exploiter, because they very clearly violate the stated and specific limitation intent of ironman mode.

Exploiting alliances as a smaller nation (suuuuure, Poland IRL would totally send their entire army to conquer the Balkans for Byzantium after getting their asses wooped by the Ottomans in the previous crusade), blockading straights with navies because the AI is stupid, closing the game process through the task manager when you fuck up in ironman mode, using larger nations to fight wars for you when they have nothing to gain from it, using rebellions targeted against your state to your favor, vassal feeding, migrating to other continents when you barely have a hold over your colony (yes I know portugal did it during the napoleonic wars, but that was different), etc.

I know most people do these things in non-ironman games and I usually have no problem with it as I also do them myself, but when you do it and then brag to your friends/forum members about how great you are because you exploited the mechanics of a imperfect game then I just feel sad for you...

Slow down there buddy!

Large nations could and did support other nations. Poland supporting a weak friendly state against a powerful hostile one is completely sensible. A great many great powers, especially come the latter half of the game, propped up smaller powers to offset rivals. Blockading straits or otherwise using navies to deter an enemy was also normal and historical, in fact, things like a land route from Spain/Austria to the low countries was a big deal in the Dutch revolts, and the idea of blocking the Aegean and straits was quite sound; the Ottomans rapidly conquered them in Europe after being at bay for a long time due to getting just a small fortified foothold a century before game start. Large nations did fight wars for no good reason except their sense of honor and prestige, just not to the absurd game level. Rebellions were frequently manipulated or directed, even at times by the leaders they were against, because any good leader will always try to move things in a favorable direction. Vassal feeding was the European modus operandi for the first half of the game. Conquer land, give to family, or claim throne, or elevate relative, etc. Until the rise of nation states, Europe at least was basically following CK2 mechanics moreso than EU4 for the first third to half or so of the timeframe. Moving capitals happened all the time, the only absurdity to migration is the lack of good pop mechanics making the new world a bit OP.

All you really have a point on is ironman crashing. That's an exploit.

What's really sad though is getting "tired of" other people bragging about single player accomplishments that have no bearing on your play. Who cares? I exploit the game. I do it basically every game I play. So what?

 

[gianlucad]

Indeed, I feel sad for those that consider vassal feeding an exploit against developer statements that it's WAD and against evidence that it's WAD in-game such as AoW, liberty desire, and annexation costs constraining it.

But not too sad. Only a little bit sad.

Oh, ok, I'll give Montenegro all of France since it's WAD, legit.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh, ok, I'll give Montenegro all of France since it's WAD, legit.

It is legit WAD. Pdox even sold us DLC to make it a straightforward process. You'd have to think *really* poorly of pdox to believe that they weren't aware of this possibility, far more poorly than I think of the patch note accuracy .

If you want to make a case that it's nonsense WRT history, you can, but if you want to make a case that it isn't WAD you have no way of succeeding because the developers straight up sold the ability to do so trivially.

Personally, I will reload a regency but not a bad monarch/heir RNG stat roll. I will reload a bad enough misclick and forgotten attrition-sunk ships, but not a bad decision or a lost naval battle. If I played ironman mode, I would still do these things... and call myself an exploiter, because they very clearly violate the stated and specific limitation intent of ironman mode.

Yeah. Like you I can't really have any pretense here. I'm cheating in that case because I feel the design is flagrantly bad...but that means it's hard for me to point fingers at other cheating unless the utility variance is crazy.

One nice thing about non ironman is that you can just press tilde and type "add_age". Your heir is then of age, bypassing the trash mechanic entirely without having to crash the game, alter stats, reload etc.

 

[TheAtreides84]

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.

You are implying roleplayers aren't serious gamers, but I'm more inclined to see min-maxing in a single player game with asimmetrical starting positions as non serious... Automatic exploration, for instance, saves time from a tedious task, and saving time that you can employ in other fun or meaningful activities is a wise choice. Beside that, what kind of min-maxer you are if you can't min-max following the actual rules of the game? Disabling a DLC is like reducing difficulty, not a very impressive achievement.

 

[PhroX]

Exploiting alliances as a smaller nation (suuuuure, Poland IRL would totally send their entire army to conquer the Balkans for Byzantium after getting their asses wooped by the Ottomans in the previous crusade), blockading straights with navies because the AI is stupid, closing the game process through the task manager when you fuck up in ironman mode, using larger nations to fight wars for you when they have nothing to gain from it, using rebellions targeted against your state to your favor, vassal feeding, migrating to other continents when you barely have a hold over your colony (yes I know portugal did it during the napoleonic wars, but that was different), etc.

I know most people do these things in non-ironman games and I usually have no problem with it as I also do them myself, but when you do it and then brag to your friends/forum members about how great you are because you exploited the mechanics of a imperfect game then I just feel sad for you...

So basically "things don't like". Give me a clear and simple method for determining whether or not something is or isn't an exploit without resorting to subjective and arbitrary judgements based on an individual's preferences.

 

[TheAtreides84]

In simple terms:
Remember the diplomatic trick? Recalling and resending it for extra improved relations? A good player could micromanage that at high speed during a mulitplayer game to get ahead, while managing everything else at speed 3 and with no pauses. It added skill ceiling, agree with it or not, thats what it did. Things like it, that are actually key features, are leaving the game because there is either no room for mircomanagement, or because the optimal play is to sack a feature off entirely (like forts).

Abusing a glitch now is called skill? And I think you have to realize modern strategy game design is looking for ways to reduce tedious micromanagement. AI governors, automation, building queues... remember the trade routes in Beyond Earth? A chore to manage. People complained, and the developers automated them.

Abusing micromanagement does not set apart good players from the unwashed crowd. It set aparts people willing to spend time and attention doing something tedious to achieve an advantage from people who realize it's just a game, and can't be bothered to do job-like tasks in their free time. Most people just want to have fun, they couldn't care less to win when there isn't any kind of prize involved. It's only right if developers listen to them.

 

[gianlucad]

So basically "things don't like". Give me a clear and simple method for determining whether or not something is or isn't an exploit without resorting to subjective and arbitrary judgements based on an individual's preferences.

Those are called examples, you can't possibly do that and think "ooh this is a viable strategy that would surely work if this game were more realistic"

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Those are called examples, you can't possibly do that and think "ooh this is a viable strategy that would surely work if this game were more realistic"

You can't do it. Phrox wins that point.

 

[grommile]

Those are called examples, you can't possibly do that and think "ooh this is a viable strategy that would surely work if this game were more realistic"

Things which approximately no reasonable player would think are cheesy in the context of the game would fail horribly if the game were more realistic.

Conversely, if the game were more realistic, regencies would not be incapable of declaring war.

 

[tfjs]

It is a sandbox game which means, to paraphrase earlier post, people play the game in different ways. There is no 'right way' to play, or 'good' way to play. The developers of the game do not intend people to play in a particular way or achieve certain goals - it is up to the player to do as they wish.
This is why the game is popular.

If this was a rigid game with a single path to follow there could be 'better' ways to achieve this progress along a path and 'good' ways of doing this. The game would be far less interesting and most of us would have finished it by now on god mode or some-such and be doing something else.

If you need to follow prescribed rules that is fine you do that, but if someone wants to piss about console changing things, playing super-bear mode and achieving WC, exploit mechanics or tricks, develop their own house rules, playing tall and never conquering the game lets you do all these things. You can do whatever you like and that is as valid a way to play the game as any other.

If you need everyone to agree with you on 'good play', the 'right way' or whatever go complete a level game.

 

[PhroX]

Those are called examples, you can't possibly do that and think "ooh this is a viable strategy that would surely work if this game were more realistic"

What has realism got to do with anything? If you want unrealistic...well, it would be quicker to name the in game features that don't fall under that category. Here's the list of them:




So again, define exploit.

 

[Edmon]

Abusing micromanagement does not set apart good players from the unwashed crowd.

... I just wanted to repeat this statement because it is literally the most amazing statement I have ever read that isn't a troll.

Edit: The fact everyone disagrees amuses me even more.

 

[doktorstick]

Abusing micromanagement does not set apart good players from the unwashed crowd. It set aparts people willing to spend time and attention doing something tedious to achieve an advantage from people who realize it's just a game, and can't be bothered to do job-like tasks in their free time.

I disagree. The difference between good players and exceptional players--throughout the history of gaming--has been the ability to micromanage. You can be the most amazeballs grand strategy thinker but if you can't deign to click a button, then you accomplish less. In industry, we say those people sit in their Ivory Towers.

Is withdrawing your troops to stack-wipe an army micromanaging? Yes. Is manually hunting rebels micromanaging? Yes (there's an option so you don't have to do this). Is it micromanaging choosing the proper trade nodes to get the most dosh? Yes (it's math, the computer should do it for you). So forth and so on.

Look, I personally don't give a flying flip how Bob, Jane, or you play your game. But it takes patience and fortitude to micromanage--which is a skill in and of itself.

 

[zdlugasz]

It causes lots of weird bugs depending on which expansions are flipped on and off, and it's not worth having those bugs there for the sake of that tiny percent of achievement hunters

But players without given DLC (or even starting game with DLC disabled) can still be plagued by bugs? nice logic here

new motto: "Buy all DLCs or you are screwed."

 

[grommile]

But players without given DLC (or even starting game with DLC disabled) can still be plagued by bugs? nice logic here

The logic there appears to be "turning on/off a DLC during a game in progress causes exciting hard-to-reproduce bugs".

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I disagree. The difference between good players and exceptional players--throughout the history of gaming--has been the ability to micromanage. You can be the most amazeballs grand strategy thinker but if you can't deign to click a button, then you accomplish less. In industry, we say those people sit in their Ivory Towers.

Is withdrawing your troops to stack-wipe an army micromanaging? Yes. Is manually hunting rebels micromanaging? Yes (there's an option so you don't have to do this). Is it micromanaging choosing the proper trade nodes to get the most dosh? Yes (it's math, the computer should do it for you). So forth and so on.

Look, I personally don't give a flying flip how Bob, Jane, or you play your game. But it takes patience and fortitude to micromanage--which is a skill in and of itself.

Not all micro is created equally though. The most skillful micro occurs when you're making choices where the optimal micromanagement is *variable*. Retreat-stackwipe isn't always an optimal decision...you have to recognize that your army is sufficient to even allow it and if you're in a superiority war you can make a case for not doing it to farm shattered win WS faster. That makes it a useful micromanagement, in contrast with mundane always-do-this type stuff.

Unfortunately, the changes to looting, scorched earth, and chain attrition nerfs have actually reduced the importance of meaningful wartime micromanagement in the game. Meanwhile, for stuff like religious conversion while you can optimize it a little that's an example of something that you could set to "auto" and lose relatively little efficiency just converting down the list (maybe an extra rebellion here or slightly longer overall conversion wait there etc, has nothing on marginal utility of battle micro).

Send/recall diplomat was strictly mundane micro; always optimal in diplomat range compared to leaving it there. That kind of stuff is flat busywork, not a meaningful game component. I didn't miss it even if I didn't appreciate it being wrongly called "almost the same as cheating".

 

[Immortal Impi]

What's this? Some rube on the internet is telling me I'm using the product I bought with my money wrong?

Harumph, good sir, what ho!

This is just a totally obscene argument. There's no "right" way to play the game. It's a product produced by Paradox Development Studios for the purposes of profit. It is purchased by you in order to enjoy it; from there the questions of "am I playing this right" are ridiculous. It's possible to learn better strategies for yourself but PDS games have never been competitive enterprises except in multiplayer, and even then I prefer cooperative MP games rather than competitive ones.

if you want to play it "competitively", go ahead, but you might as well be shitting on people who play DoTA as a casual exercise rather than a life's work.

 

[zdlugasz]

The logic there appears to be "turning on/off a DLC during a game in progress causes exciting hard-to-reproduce bugs".

Not saying that I disagree, especially if I were to take Wiz on face value.
But I have reported "exciting" bugs related to lack of El-Dorado (which I do not own) half year ago and bugs are still here.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I disagree. The difference between good players and exceptional players--throughout the history of gaming--has been the ability to micromanage. You can be the most amazeballs grand strategy thinker but if you can't deign to click a button, then you accomplish less. In industry, we say those people sit in their Ivory Towers.

Is withdrawing your troops to stack-wipe an army micromanaging? Yes. Is manually hunting rebels micromanaging? Yes (there's an option so you don't have to do this). Is it micromanaging choosing the proper trade nodes to get the most dosh? Yes (it's math, the computer should do it for you). So forth and so on.

Look, I personally don't give a flying flip how Bob, Jane, or you play your game. But it takes patience and fortitude to micromanage--which is a skill in and of itself.

I can agree that, in stict gaming terms (i.e. the artificial enviroment of a game played with a mouse on a computer), micromanagement skill is damn important. But the majority of people do not play to be the best at an artificial set of rules. Most strategy players enjoy pondering actual strategies, strategies that work on some basic principle of logic. Clicking faster or being immune to the most excruciating tedium aren't skills in a strategic sense, they are just physical or psychological attributes. Did you ever asked yourself why a majority of people enjoys sports that are also games (soccer, baseball, basketball and so on) while comparatively few enjoy athletics? That's because just showing off some capabilities, without an overall strategic context, isn't usually fun.