The official demo verdict thread.

[unmerged(752433)]

OK so I did the tutorial and "played" a "game"... The only way I can describe my experience is with: I have no idea what I'm doing...

I'll play some more this weekend and start to get used to it. My first game consisted of me just waiting for rebels and killing them... And that's it, I didn't do anything else...

As for the font size thing people keep complaining about, I feel like just changing the font itself would be helpful, I don't know if that's possible, but Times New Roman is, in itself, pretty hard to read...

 

[Rabid]

Re: diplomats, you should be able to send a diplomat who is already on a long term mission (such as improve relations) to do another job (such as deliver a peace treaty) without actively cancelling the long term mission first. It would simply add the time taken for the diplomat to 'return home' onto the normal time taken for the mission to take place, and then the diplomat would go back to his old job as soon as he came off cooldown again. This would save a massive amount of micromanagement and waiting.

 

[beckermt]

OK so I did the tutorial and "played" a "game"... The only way I can describe my experience is with: I have no idea what I'm doing...

I'll play some more this weekend and start to get used to it. My first game consisted of me just waiting for rebels and killing them... And that's it, I didn't do anything else...

As for the font size thing people keep complaining about, I feel like just changing the font itself would be helpful, I don't know if that's possible, but Times New Roman is, in itself, pretty hard to read...

I played Venice 3 times, but kept forgetting about Austria and getting stomped. Really didn't help me with learning the mechanics much. Ottomans was a much better choice. War in the west, trade in the middle, and diplo in the east. Learned a lot. The only thing that's missing is colonizing, but 28 years isn't very long anyway!

A++ would recommend as starting country.

 

[Carewolf2]

I have not spend this much time thinking about PowerPoints since my last presentation.

 

[TheDoctor46]

very confusing.

Don't understand any of the trade stuff at all. Will have to read the manual a couple of hundred times to see if any of it makes sense.

 

[Gemberkoekje]

very confusing.

Don't understand any of the trade stuff at all. Will have to read the manual a couple of hundred times to see if any of it makes sense.

Have a look at the trade discussion just below or above this, it explains it pretty well.

 

[zoidberg]

Two things I've noticed fighting France as Austria:

After a decisively won battle I tried to pursue and destroy the fleeing French army. For some reason a second battle did not initiate when my pursuing army was in the same province as the French army. I had to chase them almost to their Spanish border before I got a second battle. Is this by design, to make it more difficult to completely wipe out armies?

After decisively losing the war against the French, I got away fairly easy by offering to roll back the most recent imperial reform, which was valued at 100%. Now, maybe the imperial reforms are really that valuable. But at the time it seemed fishy that the French would accept that peace offer, which did not even include the province that was their original war goal.

 

[Gemberkoekje]

After a decisively won battle I tried to pursue and destroy the fleeing French army. For some reason a second battle did not initiate when my pursuing army was in the same province as the French army. I had to chase them almost to their Spanish border before I got a second battle. Is this by design, to make it more difficult to completely wipe out armies?

While fleeing, the unit will not battle. If you mouse-over the unit, you can see where they're fleeing to (could be 2-3 provinces further) and when they get to that province they will be fightable again.

 

[Lessing]

While fleeing, the unit will not battle. If you mouse-over the unit, you can see where they're fleeing to (could be 2-3 provinces further) and when they get to that province they will be fightable again.

I had my army retreat from Adana to the other side of the Bosphorus (Thessaloniki?). Thats pretty far.

 

[Gemberkoekje]

I had my army retreat from Adana to the other side of the Bosphorus (Thessaloniki?). Thats pretty far.

I think they flee to the closest safe area, but what exactly they decide to be a safe area, I don't know.

 

[BobbyDylan]

While fleeing, the unit will not battle. If you mouse-over the unit, you can see where they're fleeing to (could be 2-3 provinces further) and when they get to that province they will be fightable again.

Really? Where? Cos it only ever shows me the next Provence they're going to.

 

[Tuskin38]

Well, that's my impression too. It actually loads so fast the only paintings I manage to see are the Swede and then Elizabeth@Dover. It zooms by so fast I'll never even see the wrong Isabella!
I hope it's not a feature exclusive to the demo.

They removed it.

 

[Leon996]

The new trade system is brilliant

 

[galdor123]

Two things I've noticed fighting France as Austria:

After a decisively won battle I tried to pursue and destroy the fleeing French army. For some reason a second battle did not initiate when my pursuing army was in the same province as the French army. I had to chase them almost to their Spanish border before I got a second battle. Is this by design, to make it more difficult to completely wipe out armies?

This really annoyed me. I beat two large French armies in the Low Countries, and wanted to chase/destroy them. I pursued them several provinces (at least five), but they would not give battle. Gave up and retreated when I was too deep in France proper.
Also, I don't really understand the new diplomatic system. In anticipation of a future war with the French, I made a bunch of allies near the French border (Savoy, Milan, Lorraine, and probably a few more). However, they all refuse to honor my call to arms. They say why and such, but still, not one of them? France of course has several vassals/allies, which combined produce like 30-40k troops. Needless to say, in the end I lost that war.

 

[1alexey]

With slight modding, i managed to "effectivly" play Brandenburg(the tag is still Venice, but i replaced most of requirements for NIs, missions, decisions, events, ex, although i changed their first NI from defencive to Diplomacy).

So, this is how I ended 29 years after:

I added up 6 provinces(150% grow), all cored, my tech was 7, 7, 11.
Overally, the AIs did similar gains, a lot of noth HRE became 4-5 Province nations.

Impressions:
-Money is essential, and i was lacking it so much, i took economic ideas as second slot, just to have money to afford wars.
-armies are really easy to loose. I lost my army like 3 times and had to rebuild from scratch.
Granted, i got an alliance with Austria, which ment no-one was willing to DOW me, but i was floating really high war exhaustion, because Austria was warmongering.
-Rebels are evil. You usually can not defeat them without numerical superiority. Which is quite hard, since it was hard to afford 13k army, and most revolts spawned 10-15k, and later could spawn another stack. I ended up surrendering to rebel demands 3 times. Fortunately, rebels just accepted local autonomy, which hits your income, but at least you do not loose province.
-The diplomacy is vastly improved. And with diplomatic ideas expanding is relativly easy. You get claim pretty fast, and then after you finished, thanks to claim and NI coring dicounts you can core 5 base tax province for arround 50 amd points, compared to the usuall price of 100 for province without claim and NI coring discount.
-had a coalition against me, but since there was 4-5 other big expanders arround, coalition members kept moving in and out, so i didn`t had a coalition war against me.

Overally game is looking really good. Although the long term impact of expanding is relativly hard to judge in only 28 years of game.

 

[Raen]

The game NEEDS smaller info windows. The screen feels just too crowded if you have a siege, a province or an army selected.

What resolution are you playing at? At 1280x1024 I agreed with you, so I went up to 1600x1200 and everything is fine.

 

[Zarco]

In my Austria game, i lost half my army to attrition when on my way to fight in Flandres.

 

[hito1]

I'm just 20 minutes into the tutorial, but I already have to say that I'm quite excited!

It's is early to ascertain anything, but if things continue like this, Paradox managed to outperform CKII! I'll be so happy if that's the case, you surely deserve so!

 

[Rey]

Create a new unit - You'll see a double arrow symbol below each ship type, so you can detach all transports into the new group.

Thx, gonna try that

 

[oilers41]

The game seems fantastic. Ive played a few times through with Portugal and the choices that you have to make with regards to ideas vs tech is very interesting. You start with exploration idea group and obviously you want to move down that group ASAP, but then what do you pick as idea group 2? Expansion would help you grow your colonial empire much quicker, but then you will be garbage at diplomatic tech.... its really looking like this is going to be a game that sucks up a lot of my time