Unless it is a rival that is obviously weaker than you and you want to beat him later for some power projection.
Time for a break from this game.
- Thread starter Orkonkel
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Unless it is a rival that is obviously weaker than you and you want to beat him later for some power projection.
I can understand your situation as i'm at 382 hours (more like 330-350 as some of them i was doing something else and not playing) and i'm not a good player at all I would say i'm a medium player and i lack the skills and strategies employed by very good players to be in that category yet.
But the fact is that you won't get better unless you want to ! And that works for any game, any sport, anything in life.
You want to get better ? Invest time, read WC AAR or AAR of small countries that turned into big powers to see how it was actually done, look at videos (DDR Jake is the best imo as he explains things and when he doesn't you can always ask and his community/Him will answer you. Read the wiki, but more importantly PRACTICE.
You need to practice merc spamming, micro managing units, trade, alliances. I used to know a lot about the game but never really put it into my game because of not enought practice of mechanisms.
So what should you do ?
1)Look at a lot of videos / AARs / Ask questions on the forum and make a list of all the things good players use and do to win the game.
2)Launch an ironman game put into practice what you learned and fail ! People will advise you to go without ironman but i think that's bad and i think the game should be learned the hardway because what will work without ironman won't sometimes work in ironman so this way you won't have any surprises and you won't have to adapt.
You just need to want to get better at it (As with anything in life) I can tell you i've made far more progress in my last 5 hours than i did in my last 50-100 hours because i actually tried what i knew was good but was too afraid to do in the past due to me believing it was too hard.
Bottom line is, invest time and you'll get better and this doesn't have to be a lot of time if you're really serious about this 20 hours should be enough for your skill level to improve dramatically. And the game will be ALOT MORE FUN believe me.
But the fact is that you won't get better unless you want to ! And that works for any game, any sport, anything in life.
You want to get better ? Invest time, read WC AAR or AAR of small countries that turned into big powers to see how it was actually done, look at videos (DDR Jake is the best imo as he explains things and when he doesn't you can always ask and his community/Him will answer you. Read the wiki, but more importantly PRACTICE.
You need to practice merc spamming, micro managing units, trade, alliances. I used to know a lot about the game but never really put it into my game because of not enought practice of mechanisms.
So what should you do ?
1)Look at a lot of videos / AARs / Ask questions on the forum and make a list of all the things good players use and do to win the game.
2)Launch an ironman game put into practice what you learned and fail ! People will advise you to go without ironman but i think that's bad and i think the game should be learned the hardway because what will work without ironman won't sometimes work in ironman so this way you won't have any surprises and you won't have to adapt.
You just need to want to get better at it (As with anything in life) I can tell you i've made far more progress in my last 5 hours than i did in my last 50-100 hours because i actually tried what i knew was good but was too afraid to do in the past due to me believing it was too hard.
Bottom line is, invest time and you'll get better and this doesn't have to be a lot of time if you're really serious about this 20 hours should be enough for your skill level to improve dramatically. And the game will be ALOT MORE FUN believe me.
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I never understood this drivel. Spending 1k hours attempting to enjoy something makes a lot more sense than reading through threads about a topic, ignoring that topic, and contributing nothing while using an ad hominem.
Sliding scale rules and bad (but improving) UI are serious issues in this game still. I can't imagine losing as those starts with 1k hours in SP, unless of course you take a break and come back to a different game. This game's biggest problems are its UI, pacing being jostled around, and selective + logically inconsistent application of "history" versus alleged balance.
Sounds to me like a conflict of perspective. Instead of welcoming more challenge you are looking for easy mode. I too find the game more challenging with each patch, but I welcomed the challenge and found it fun. I had to make adjustments and be more careful with expansion. Always keep your diplomats working. Micro them hard early game. Once you get relations with neighbors up then it is easy from there. If possible, release nations and diplo-vassalize vs. direct annexation.
I think in some of your examples you are not telling us everything. As mentioned, you should not be receiving that much AE or coalitions from those acquisitions. Taking stuff in Defensive wars is far more dangerous, so be aware of the AE you might take in that case. Settle for gold and war reps or releasing stuff if otherwise too costly. More than half my expansion in most cases is through vassals.
I do agree that rebels are a bit too strong in most cases. Usually not an issue when large and strong, but can be burdensome early when small. Still, there is always a way to deal with them.
I think in some of your examples you are not telling us everything. As mentioned, you should not be receiving that much AE or coalitions from those acquisitions. Taking stuff in Defensive wars is far more dangerous, so be aware of the AE you might take in that case. Settle for gold and war reps or releasing stuff if otherwise too costly. More than half my expansion in most cases is through vassals.
I do agree that rebels are a bit too strong in most cases. Usually not an issue when large and strong, but can be burdensome early when small. Still, there is always a way to deal with them.
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Still, if you do something like punching Wales out of England and don't follow up with another war, you can sure as hell expect those provinces to get reconquered by claim in just a few years.
Unless it is a rival that is obviously weaker than you and you want to beat him later for some power projection.
With a weaker rival, I'd rather milk him for humiliations as long as possible. Force-releasing or taking provinces from him just means I'll eclipse him sooner.
This is a fantastic idea. Shouldn't be too hard to code, either: say you get a dropdown with a list of nations that are within 10 AE points from going Outraged.
Interesting (last version I played was 1.9) but doesn´t that create issues versus AI and makes spanking France even easier?
Wouldn´t the more intuitive way to simply say that in tooltip that AE gained in the peace deal could make nation X,Y and Z potentially join/create coalition?
Yeah, it's dumb that the truce between former owner and released nation is always five years, given that the truce from the war that released it could be 15.
I think that AE/Coalition a bit to binary and, more improtantly, too dependent on single actions (large peacedeals) for it to be a useful indicator to be honest ... at least you can relatively precisely estimate when rebellion hapens (or rather if its very soon or in a couple of years).
That would be very helpful as well. But I think a list of countries near the "danger zone" should definitely be accessible outside the peace deal screen (whether in a dropdown alert or in the ledger), to aid in planning before you actually declare war.
True enough, but unless they're strategically important or have a lot of cores to return, it can feel like a waste of a diplo slot.
Well, you start with major powers but quit as soon as you loose a war... I happen to do that when I'm a 2/3 PM but otherwise, it's nowhere near the end; all you need not to do is to not to revoke your cores and you can get more than you lost in any subsequent war for very low AE.
Then, there are poor mistakes. As Burgundy for exemple, trying to PU Austria, while Bohemia is the Emperor, DOWing Austria allowed Bohemia to drag all its allies in the war. That's how any HRE war works.
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Most of the OP's implied suggestions aren't credible. "Bad rolls" by themselves will not allow solitary Portugal to roflstomp Castile. Attacking Austria without allies is a bad move. As Sweden losing one battle against rebels shouldn't make you spiral out of control. Poor AE management will wreck the Ottomans just as it can wreck France or an HRE. No nation should be an "I WIN" button and that's to Paradox's credit.
A lot of the "frustration" above is the player unwilling to take some unlucky circumstance, one war defeat, and then not adapting bouncing or back. Refusing to accept delays in expansion while coalitions cool down is usually a bad move. Attacking without knowing how strong the forces allied against you are is a bad move. Not paying attention to rebel progress, or being unwilling to hire mercs when manpower is in the dirt, is a bad move.
Truly, the players you mention have mastered the game. Most of them have publicly wept because there are no more worlds to conquer. I cannot "succeed" at this game on their level either, but I don't think this is because the game is broken or unbalanced. I think in general this is an unfortunate side-effect of playing other 4X strategy games, where World Conquest is de rigueur, because WC is relatively very easy in Civ 5 it should not necessarily be in EU4.
The OP sounds frustrated, a few weeks of break sounds like it would do them some good.
A lot of the "frustration" above is the player unwilling to take some unlucky circumstance, one war defeat, and then not adapting bouncing or back. Refusing to accept delays in expansion while coalitions cool down is usually a bad move. Attacking without knowing how strong the forces allied against you are is a bad move. Not paying attention to rebel progress, or being unwilling to hire mercs when manpower is in the dirt, is a bad move.
Truly, the players you mention have mastered the game. Most of them have publicly wept because there are no more worlds to conquer. I cannot "succeed" at this game on their level either, but I don't think this is because the game is broken or unbalanced. I think in general this is an unfortunate side-effect of playing other 4X strategy games, where World Conquest is de rigueur, because WC is relatively very easy in Civ 5 it should not necessarily be in EU4.
The OP sounds frustrated, a few weeks of break sounds like it would do them some good.
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I don't want to be rude or mean, but it's time to reassess. With a thousand hours into the game, to fail at these scenarios you paint means:
First of all, your tactical abilities are sub-par. Hard to tell how bad exactly... but bad. Bad like not knowing when to break off a battle that you're losing, bad like attaking into mountains I guess. It's almost always possible to fight the AI to a white peace by making use of every trick in the book. Sometimes it takes 10 years or more to turn back a greatly superior enemy, but eventually the war-length modifier will make the AI accept white peace.
Next: your strategic abilities are dismal. Seriously, like worse than Hitler and Hannibal combined. In every case you got pasted without having a single ally (in the only case you ever mentioned allies, you ended up fighting them too). It's almost like you don't know what allies are for! Also, a succesful strategy includes attainable long-term goals and patching up your weak points. Losing naval supremacy as Ottomans shows an astounding lack of strategic planning.
Finally, your endurance and heart is where you truly fail in my opinion. No you don't need to be an exceptional player to succeed in an EUIV campaign. You don't need to know every trick. But you do need to know that losing a war doesn't mean losing the game. Nobody enjoys losing provinces, but you can always bounce back. It even says so in the loading screens
Ok I'm done now. And yes, you asked for this, coming to the forums and making this thread you made.
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With 100 hours there are people that think that the game is too easy, after 4 or five games. Personally if you have difficulty playing the easy nation after 1000 hours of gameplay I don't know what to say. You are not talking about OPM or inferior tech, but about Castille, Burgundy, Ottomans and Swede. Is very difficult do bad games with these with so many hours of experience, maybe you never entered in the game philosophy, but only explored the superficial crust, clicking around, becouse you considered the game interesting, but not deserving a some kind of interest from you.
Do you always give up when something becomes a little harder then usual ?
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Well first I would say that you're making a very bold claim on behalf of "us regulars" such as myself. I've never found the game to be overly difficult. I've had success with many countries including the 4 that you listed, and I have less playtime than you do. So please be more aware of when you're entitled to speak on behalf of all of "us regulars" and when you're actually just speaking for yourself.
Second, I would suggest that you should turn the difficulty down if you just want to have a relaxing playthrough, and the current difficulty is too much.
