Time for a break from this game.

[Stolen Rutters]

You took a break, but the game should play a certain way even after the next big expansion coming up shortly. I believe it's a good thing to take breaks from games, but still I wanted to detail my earlier post a little.

I did try to help by pointing out that that battle in your pic wasn't actually that bad a loss. Thinking you can come in against an equally capable foe at a combat width disadvantage is something I had to learn was not that great an idea.

The dice rolls are random. The flanking bonus is not. The general affects dice rolls but the unit disparity is always there. That means giving up the unit advantage and expecting the general to overcome is like choosing a random outcome over a more reliable outcome. Even though both ways sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, one way in a sense is less random.

One more point.

It looks like you are not a fan of Mercenaries, probably because they cost too much. The benefit of mercenaries is that they don't take manpower from your pool. Whenever you are running out of manpower, Mercs keep the fight going. Money can be had from many places, but your manpower pool replenishes very slowly. The year 1450, you won't have Armories to push your manpower up, or Temples to increase force limits (from the beginning of the game, 1 base tax equals 0.25 force limit).

So buy mercs.

 

[Orkonkel]

1st of, you mean Agressive expansion.

2nd, he was talking about Return Cores! those net you 0 AE, yes, including your vassals, taking provinces from transfer occupation would give you the same amount of AE though,

pls check your facts before insulting others mkay?

What, wut. I guess we have different opinions of what constitutes vassal feeding, then. If he meant returning cores, he should've said returning cores. Vassal feeding per the definition of everyone I know playing the game is transferring sieges to a vassal and letting them core provinces you conquer while you diplo-annex them later.

But fine, it's okay for people to take shots at me (clearly, I am the worst person ever), but if I take offense, I need to check my facts before insulting them.

You're a unicorn, too.

 

[BFTeixeira]

What, wut. I guess we have different opinions of what constitutes vassal feeding, then. If he meant returning cores, he should've said returning cores. Vassal feeding per the definition of everyone I know playing the game is transferring sieges to a vassal and letting them core provinces you conquer while you diplo-annex them later.

But fine, it's okay for people to take shots at me (clearly, I am the worst person ever), but if I take offense, I need to check my facts before insulting them.

You're a unicorn, too.

If only you played with the same determination as you post in this thread...

 

[Orkonkel]

You took a break, but the game should play a certain way even after the next big expansion coming up shortly. I believe it's ok to take a break from games, but still I wanted to detail my earlier post a little.

I did try to help by pointing out that that battle in your pic wasn't actually that bad a loss. Thinking you can come in against an equally capable foe at a combat width disadvantage is something I had to learn was not that great an idea.

The dice rolls are random. The flanking bonus is not. The general affects dice rolls but the unit disparity is always there. That means giving up the unit advantage and expecting the general to overcome is like choosing a random outcome over a more reliable outcome. Even though both ways sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, one way in a sense is less random.

One more point.

It looks like you are not a fan of Mercenaries, probably because they cost too much. The benefit of mercenaries is that they don't take manpower from your pool. Whenever you are running out of manpower, Mercs keep the fight going. Money can be had from many places, but your manpower pool replenishes very slowly. The year 1450, you won't have Armories to push your manpower up, or Temples to increase force limits (from the beginning of the game, 1 base tax equals 0.25 force limit).

So buy mercs.

Your post was helpful. I had no idea numbers made that much of a difference (in the past, rebels could be dealt with even with smaller armies). Anyway. Sweden's starting forcelimit is 12. I think I had 16, or maybe 17 after the independence war ended? I obviously made a mistake attacking that rebel stack, but it was a mistake stemming from habit -- rebels are a lot more dangerous than they used to be a few patches ago (I stopped playing a few months before the Art of War expansion and just started again). My infantry was almost all mercenaries at one point, but my manpower recovered eventually and I started replacing them with regular troops to reduce maintenance in the last few years.

I made a few mistakes here. Should've waited for the defend Norway mission instead of conquering them. I should've gotten a Russian minor as vassal instead of coring everything on my own. Religious unity was dangerously low before I could flip protestant. Also, I picked exploration as my second idea because I wanted to see how the new colonization works. Should've gone either diplomatic or influence. Might try again and see if I can't start dealing with England/Commonwealth a bit earlier. Swedish Military Reforms (5% morale and 10% infantry cost) and Centralization Reforms (-0.05% monthly automony) are pretty big bonuses just from events.

I'm not mad at the game anymore. It's not that vastly different from what it was before. Still don't agree with people allying during ongoing wars and calling in new participants. Still think the RNG plays too much of a role in combat (I guess it's still better than the unit pips of ye olden days). And I still think that boosting rebels made the game more tedious rather than it is more interesting.

 

[Orkonkel]

If only you played with the same determination as you post in this thread...

Yes, let's shame people for using the forums. That ought to make them realize how wrong they are.

 

[Beagá]

You have the freedom to use the forum, but not the right to demand what you type is considered RIGHT.

 

[Orkonkel]

You have the freedom to use the forum, but not the right to demand what you type is considered RIGHT.

I never once demanded anything of that sort. I've been pretty respectful of other peoples' opinions, even though the majority of the posts has been responses about how much of a terribad player I am. Some people didn't even stop at saying how bad of a player I am, but rather decided to voice their opinion of how bad of a person I am.

To me, that is not considered RIGHT, as you so eloquently put it.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Yes, let's shame people for using the forums. That ought to make them realize how wrong they are.

If you insisted in your games like you do in the forum, you'd be fine. All you're showing is that if anything doesn't go your way, it's the games fault (or in the forum, it's the other users that are unicorns)...

 

[gaius valerius]

I'd just point out that appealing to the "great, historical wars" makes little sense - up to Napoleon, wars saw little border changes in Western Europe. The rest was inheritances, mostly.

And dynastic upheavals. The War of Spanish Succession saw a whole lot of that. And in turn, that required compensation for that noble offspring that was not endowed with a fancy inheritance. War was in essence the chief 'occupation' of the leading classes of European society (and by expansion, the widerworld), their currency were titles and the accompanying land.

Larger wars were often fought over minor border changes, EU IV doesn't simulate this very well sadly. And even in the case of larger war, the outcome was often a negotiated compromise, again something sadly the AI cannot do. In that sense diplomacy in this game is very lacking.

 

[Orkonkel]

If you insisted in your games like you do in the forum, you'd be fine. All you're showing is that if anything doesn't go your way, it's the games fault (or in the forum, it's the other users that are unicorns)...

I didn't call anyone unicorns for disagreeing with me; I reserved that hateful jeer for people that were needlessly rude and/or made patronizing comments.

I am not really sure what to say about your other comment. Instead of wasting time and energy to respond to it, I am going to show you an image of the Ottomans vs the Mameluks:

 

[BFTeixeira]

I didn't call anyone unicorns for disagreeing with me; I reserved that hateful jeer for people that were needlessly rude and/or made patronizing comments.

I am not really sure what to say about your other comment. Instead of wasting time and energy to respond to it, I am going to show you an image of the Ottomans vs the Mameluks:

I'm not wasting more time with a 1000plus hours player that doesn't understand the games rules, and complains that the game should be easier for his amusement. Just take off ironman, and put the game in the easy mode.

 

[TenshiN]

You say people who blame the game (not understanding game mechanics) are the worst, but in the same post you suggest using vassal-feeding as a way to avoid AE. You do realize that giving a vassal a province nets you exactly the same amount of overextension as taking it yourself, right?

Personally, I think that people who are smug hypocrits are the worst.

.....Are you aware you can use a "Return Core" option in a peace deal to avoid AE altogether for a bit of DIP points?

 

[BarskiPatzow]

Game ends 1821.

(I found it fun too)

Hahahaha, I didn't realize that ))

 

[Korsan82]

You will get a lot of "disagrees" for this but you are at a point that everyone will reach sooner or later.

The balancing of this game is indeed awful and designed purely as punishement for the player's success. It is restrictive and has too many artificial not logical borders and arbitrary limits.

Each patch adds more arbitrary limits and deepens the level of abstraction.

While vanilla game was kind of accessible every patch makes it harder for new players to understand the very core rules of the game. Every patch destroys a part of accessibility. And don't get me wrong, casual gaming is nothing that should be considered at EU franchise, but accessibility is not the same. Gameplay functions should - if possible- be self explaining and intuitive while almost every action is EUIV feels artificial.

I've made dozens of threads on how to address some key problems but Paradox went to far with this design to make a U turn now.

One thing is granted: You will be vastly disappointed by EU5 if that's not providing a major step forward. I've been there myself. During the step from EU3 to EU4 I had the same feelings about EU3 as you have now, just to see them ALL come back in a modified EU3, which was sold as EU4.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Opaque UI and hidden rules + hidden rules changes do indeed plague the game still, and the effects can certainly be seen in this thread, but the concept of perpetual intermediacy comes to mind also. We have a mix of both in this case.

Though it's worth noting that for whatever reason, the vast majority of players wind up being perpetually intermediate, so making the game's rules accessible and understandable to them is kind of important.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Opaque UI and hidden rules + hidden rules changes do indeed plague the game still, and the effects can certainly be seen in this thread, but the concept of perpetual intermediacy comes to mind also. We have a mix of both in this case.

Though it's worth noting that for whatever reason, the vast majority of players wind up being perpetually intermediate, so making the game's rules accessible and understandable to them is kind of important.

The game definitively needs better tutorials and manuals for the new player, but one of things that make this such a great game, it's the game complexity. There are some other games that are way easier and with a friendlier learning curve if you're more of a casual player.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The game definitively needs better tutorials and manuals for the new player, but one of things that make this such a great game, it's the game complexity. There are some other games that are way easier and with a friendlier learning curve if you're more of a casual player.

I don't have a problem with complexity at all, but I do have a problem with trial and error gameplay in a strategy title and a UI that misleads the user. Those things are unrelated; fixing the latter will not materially impact the former.

EU IV does not need to lean on fake difficulty.

 

[Viperswhip]

The new expansion looks kind of poopy to me if the proposed map was part of it. In any case, I feel your pain OP, I take breaks from the game a lot, and when I come back, new rules, nothing previously posted matters or works anymore. Okay, the game evolves, EU3 did as well, it's a matter of life with this franchise, that I do kind of still love, even though EU4 didn't take the same place in my heart that EU3 holds.

However, as Spain you can beat France silly, you did something wrong. You must have taken a mil idea, there is no real other response to that. I beat them up all the time. Maybe your were playing on hard, but even then... I mean, England can do it, and Spain actually has more money than them and a shorter trip to deliver mercs, and Aragon probably won't give access, well, to either of you.

You are in a very defensible position in Spain, if you keep a close eye out (and you should have destroyed every other fleet in the Western hemisphere in the first 50 years) then they can't bring troops into your land because there is a string of mountains protecting you. Just turtle until they peace out and then break out. There is a mandatory white peace with no action after 5 years.

Also, you really should have beat the poop out of Austria to start and gotten the Inheritance for yourself, just saying, see my threads.

 

[Beagá]

You will get a lot of "disagrees" for this but you are at a point that everyone will reach sooner or later.

The balancing of this game is indeed awful and designed purely as punishement for the player's success. It is restrictive and has too many artificial not logical borders and arbitrary limits.

Because no one ever sees coalition versus AI.

Oh wait

Yes it is restrictive. Real life is restrictive.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Because no one ever sees coalition versus AI.

Oh wait

Yes it is restrictive. Real life is restrictive.

The mere fact that you can achieve WC shows that the game is not restrictive.