What are some of your unpopular opinions of EU4?

[EarlKonrad]

I don't like when people assert "Unpopular Opinions" that are actually popular or barely controversial.

I think a lot of the people think they add something but, as they are implemented in Vic2 and Imperator, they hinder the gameplay more than help. If POPs add something, great, but I wouldn't want them just to have them.

[...]

What I gather from surfing this forum is that the number of forum users that think POP > not having POP is higher than those that think the opposite. I say this from my observations that threads where someone deffends that the series would be better off by having POPs or that propose a pop-like system and proclaim their clear superiority in making the game better (whatever better may mean to them) tend to get both more "agree" and comments saying "Go POP!" Rather than "respectfully disagree" and comments saying "No POP!".

 

[raphi1985]

Innovative ideas are great as an opener for most tags.

 

[Kimbole]

Fort movement rules might be opaque but it really doesn’t matter very much for gameplay.

I don’t begin to understand the intricacies but despite that I have been aware of a seriously annoying instance maybe twice in >2000 hours of playing. Either I can get where I want to go or I can’t and I have to capture a fort first and my brain seems to be able to accept that without it jarring the overwhelming majority of the time.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Fort movement rules might be opaque but it really doesn’t matter very much for gameplay.

I don’t begin to understand the intricacies but despite that I have been aware of a seriously annoying instance maybe twice in >2000 hours of playing. Either I can get where I want to go or I can’t and I have to capture a fort first and my brain seems to be able to accept that without it jarring the overwhelming majority of the time.

Hard to defend game rules without knowing the game rules, and outright claiming you don't understand a particular rule after interacting with it for literally thousands of hours is a pretty damning case against it in its own right.

Additionally, you can't simply observe allies and accurate tell me (or anybody else, including yourself) where your allies will be allowed to move and be correct consistently. Yet where armies are allowed to move is a game rule, so that's hard to square as a valid mechanic then.

You can literally trap yourself by reducing movement options as a result of capturing a fort. It's not a functional system and never should have seen existence in EU 4 until it was. The older system wasn't great, but it worked, and importantly it didn't obstruct knowledge of game rules to even top 1% playtime players...

 

[JaxElite]

1. The game is, at it's core, a map painter, for better or worse. Calls to nerf wide play and mechanics like territorial corruption, etc have made the game worse, and misunderstand the core gameplay created by the developers. The game is not intended to be a historical simulation or at all realistic.

2. Aside from a few changes, all the development of the past few years has made the game actively worse. They should have ended development with Dharma at the latest and moved on to a new game.

Have you.... have you just stated the two most voiced opinions of all time that each make up more threads in this forum than any other topic excluding questions in an "unpopular opinion" thread? I mean i know that unpopular opinion threads are usually full of quite popular opinions that still tend to get some pushback but this is a whole other level.

Imagine someone posting "wasting time when the ball isn't in play when ahead is unsportsmanlike" as an unpopular opinion in a football forum. That is about the same level.

 

[Zaddy]

Have you.... have you just stated the two most voiced opinions of all time that each make up more threads in this forum than any other topic excluding questions in an "unpopular opinion" thread? I mean i know that unpopular opinion threads are usually full of quite popular opinions that still tend to get some pushback but this is a whole other level.

Imagine someone posting "wasting time when the ball isn't in play when ahead is unsportsmanlike" as an unpopular opinion in a football forum. That is about the same level.

I totally disagree, actually. I believe (from polling Paradox has done of forum members and general time spent here), that the desire to turn EU4 into a more Meiou and Taxes-esque historical simulation is in the very healthy majority. I think that would be a mistake for a variety of reasons.

 

[JaxElite]

I totally disagree, actually. I believe (from polling Paradox has done of forum members and general time spent here), that the desire to turn EU4 into a more Meiou and Taxes-esque historical simulation is in the very healthy majority. I think that would be a mistake for a variety of reasons.

But that is something completely differwnt than what you wrote in your point. You said that nerfing wide play has made the game worse and nearly every mechanic that did that was met by a ragefuelled community until it was removed. Over the last few years eveey single significant wide play nerf was removed and a multitude of wide play festures were added, with the notable exception of the absolitism nerf in emperor. I mean even the leviathan features meant to buff tall are evwn stronger buffs for wide play. Terr corr was removed. GC allows VASTLY more states than the old stste limit ever did, monarch point sources were added. The game right now is more of a map painter than it ever was, because the second someone proposes nerfs to wide play hell is unleashed in this forum.
What you are now describing with the PDX polls etc. is more nation management, which does not contradict the map painting nature of the game per se and is a completely different point

EDIT: i think what you are trying to say is "EU4 should only play to it's stregths as an abstract map painter, instead of trying to add more management components to the game", which would maybe qualify for an unpopular opinion, at least it isn't total mainstream

 

[Zaddy]

EDIT: i think what you are trying to say is "EU4 should only play to it's stregths as an abstract map painter, instead of trying to add more management components to the game", which would maybe qualify for an unpopular opinion, at least it isn't total mainstream

Correct.

 

[Kimbole]

Hard to defend game rules without knowing the game rules, and outright claiming you don't understand a particular rule after interacting with it for literally thousands of hours is a pretty damning case against it in its own right.

Additionally, you can't simply observe allies and accurate tell me (or anybody else, including yourself) where your allies will be allowed to move and be correct consistently. Yet where armies are allowed to move is a game rule, so that's hard to square as a valid mechanic then.

You can literally trap yourself by reducing movement options as a result of capturing a fort. It's not a functional system and never should have seen existence in EU 4 until it was. The older system wasn't great, but it worked, and importantly it didn't obstruct knowledge of game rules to even top 1% playtime players...

I certainly wouldn’t disagree with any of those objective truths. There have been many well articulated complaints over the years after all. Somehow it’s a problem that I can get over quite easily though when I’m playing my own games (even when the odd army has met a grizzly end as a result). Perhaps I’ve a deeper level of instinctive understanding of what movement will probably work than I think and that means I dodge the worst of it, or maybe just a strange degree of tolerance for wackiness as long as it’s quite occasional. Who knows, I certainly don’t expect it to be a popular opinion.

 

[MachopPower69]

I totally disagree, actually. I believe (from polling Paradox has done of forum members and general time spent here), that the desire to turn EU4 into a more Meiou and Taxes-esque historical simulation is in the very healthy majority. I think that would be a mistake for a variety of reasons.

Speaking of MEIOU and Taxes, my unpopular opinion is that it sucks. Sure the mechanics are complicated, but it slows down the game, makes you unable to develop your lands and it is literally its own game plastered on a game. Like Kaiserreich/DH for Hearts of Iron 4.

 

[Zaddy]

Speaking of MEIOU and Taxes, my unpopular opinion is that it sucks. Sure the mechanics are complicated, but it slows down the game, makes you unable to develop your lands and it is literally its own game plastered on a game. Like Kaiserreich/DH for Hearts of Iron 4.

I'm not even necessarily against an M&T style game. With M&T in particular, (while granting that what they've created is extremely deep), my issue is that the game slows down to unbearable crawl for me. I'm the type of player that goes down to speed 4 to micro major wars in vanilla. Speed 4 M&T is like speed 2 vanilla and it just drives me completely bonkers. The mod is also extremely crash prone for me.

 

[blak (big)]

I liked Yellow Fars.

Also you should definitely be able to rename your state a la CK2/3.

 

[Vohen]

World conquests and mindless blobs are disgusting, I can't help but make an "ew" face every time I see one.
Also, unmodded EU4 is not that good, certainly below most other PDX games.

Absolutely agree this!

Sure, i understand those who would rather a pop system than a "dev" abstraction, but honestly development WORKS.

Most criticism leveled towards the dev system is not necessarily an issue of the the developement mechanic per say, but how the player and the world interacts with it.

I would dare say that it would be perfectly possible for Paradox to create an EU game with Victoria-levels of complexity and depth while still using an abstracted dev sistem instead of pops.

Also, as far as Monarch Points are concerned, i think it is not necessarily bad and depends a bit on how it is implemented.
Money alone simply cannot be the single currency of a strategy game, there are an incalculable amount of social issues that completely transcend how much money a country has.

When it is too much abstracted, sure it becomes like some sort of magical mana, but really the only way to make functional videogame where you can control most aspects of nation governing is by having some sort of abstracted currencies.
What constitutes mana and what doesn't is actually incredibly vague and hard to explain when you think about it.

I don't know why you people think this is an unpopular opinion.
It is not, at least not here in the EU4 forum.
Say how you love mana in any other forum and the red Xs will come flying to you, but not here.

Wanna see an unpopular opinion here?
While not impossible to make it at least bearable, mana in EU4 is horribly designed, even Johan himself regrets it*, it makes the game feel like a glorified board game.
Pops, while not the solution for every problem, second coming of Christ many make it out to be, would be a great base to solve some of this game's biggest issues, but unfortunately it's too late to implement such a thing by now.

Now go ahead, bring me the red Xs and prove me right.
Ah, who am I kidding, you're probably just going to leave a "haha", aren't you?

In all seriousness though, I hate being this unfiltered and inflammatory, specifically when talking on such subjective terms, but well, this is the appropriate thread for it isn't it, not exactly meant for a serious discussion.

*source: PDXCON discord Q&A

 

[Barleon]

İt is a perfectly balanced game, so meticulously crafted that no exploit exists and with an AI that you just can't seem to best..

 

[JKiller96]

I liked Yellow Fars.

Also you should definitely be able to rename your state a la CK2/3.

Yellow Fars? You are a monster and your unpopular opinion should stay unpopular. Never before have my eyes perceived something as corrupt and condemnable as this opinion.

Fars should obviously be neon orange.

 

[Skjalf]

Going for naval supremacy and ruling the waves is actually a lot of fun, beating the British navy and reigning free to conquer whatever clay you wish feels very rewarding. Naval hegemony is the best hegemony.

 

[LSF]

There should be more dev in China (more than double), India, Mexico and Andes and less dev in Great Britain, Scandinavia and Germany.

There should be no magical powers from HRE reforms, and all reforms should have only diplomatic features, or maybe zero-sum features (like transfering of resources from princes to the emperor).

The mission system should vanish.

The malus from non-accepted culture should be much stronger.

Religious conversion should cost DIP mana and Culture conversion should cost MIL mana and decrease dev.

 

[Astalic]

I have no problem with mana and dev concepts. Oh and I don't like pops (i tryed IR and Stellaris and pop aren't a mechanic i liked, it add a layer of micro).

 

[coorta19]

Not exactly sure if this is unpopular but I have not seen this mentioned before very often. Military access system combined with existing weak land attrition make for some weird things in game - for example polish armies invading southeast asia - via land. Polish armies freely pass through numerous states, cross thousands of kilometers without suffering any loses trom attrition. Countries should not be willing to randomly grant military access unless you are their ally, country feel threatened by you or you have very good relations (+70 at least). And there should be no conditional military access. If someone allows you to to through its territory your war enemy should not get automatically access (unless he fufills the same conditions as you). Attrition and supply of your armies should be at least handled by need to have direct link (via occupied provinces) to your provinces with trade center as logistical centers or your armies will be out of supply and start suffering massive attrition, which they can for some time delay by looting province they are in. But once province is fully looted and you have still not established connection with your territories, your army will be quickly destroyed by attrition. And the longer distance you are from your provinces despite being connected by occupied territories, your forces will suffer attrition unless you extend your logistic by capturing trade centers and building supply depots.

 

[Greene]

Many of these unpopular opinions are quite popular.