What are some of your unpopular opinions of EU4?

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My "unpopular" opinion is that there are a lot of people on the forums that would be way better off playing a different game than trying to make EU4 into the game they want to play.
 
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My "unpopular" opinion is that there are a lot of people on the forums that would be way better off playing a different game than trying to make EU4 into the game they want to play.
What if the game you want to play is the game that was described in EUIV dev diary #0, “our vision”?
 
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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...
And it is even worse with new Mercs system where attached armies lost their return province and can't move back where main army still does.
An other flaw with new merc system is that you cant build 1k stack in ennemy territories to create back a good return province by merging army.
Finally, I find a way to bypass a fort by attaching myself to a vassal army that are authorized to pass a fort my army can't (and by commanding it to go siege a province behind that fort).
So yes, I will always support you for forts matters and nerver respectfully disagree with you :)
 
What if the game you want to play is the game that was described in EUIV dev diary #0, “our vision”?
Well, what is more pertinent, the early statements and plans, or the finished product 8 years later? It's evident that the game has not been designed as a deep historical simulation of any kind, regardless of what the dev dairies said in 2012.

Now EU5, sure, you could petition the devs to take the game in a different direction from the decidedly historical flavored map painter of EU4. I wouldn't necessarily be against it at all, as long as it's fun. But I don't understand the urge to agitate for changes to the game that we both know aren't going to happen...
 
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What if the game you want to play is the game that was described in EUIV dev diary #0, “our vision”?
Not a single one of the things you're complaining in this thread about are contained in that dev diary, except for vague notions of plausible (already arbitrary, given the constraints of the game and psychology) that were in that diary referring to DHEs which were a strict improvement to the historical events of EU2.

If you want to play EU3, go ahead and play EU3, no one is going to stop you. Sitting here and complaining that EU4 isn't EU3 is exactly the thing I said earlier. You'd be way better off doing that.
 
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Not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I think the only thing that should be pin-point historically accurate is the map in 1444 but nothing really matters after that; the butterfly effect begins immediately after day 1.

There should be ways of expansion that are varied, instead of direct railroading. The historical path should be plausible, but by no means the most common result. The Surrender of Maine and Iberian Wedding events are two such things that I think could be done away with in this regard.


EDIT: This includes railroading Europe to be dominant over the rest of the world through institutions and tech disadvantages (aside from starting at different techs). I guess this would be the true unpopular opinion.
 
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Not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I think the only thing that should be pin-point historically accurate is the map in 1444 but nothing really matters after that; the butterfly effect begins immediately after day 1.

There should be ways of expansion that are varied, instead of direct railroading. The historical path should be plausible, but by no means the most common result. The Surrender of Maine and Iberian Wedding events are two such things that I think could be done away with in this regard.


EDIT: This includes railroading Europe to be dominant over the rest of the world through institutions and tech disadvantages (aside from starting at different techs). I guess this would be the true unpopular opinion.

I don't like any of the two extremes that you are describing. Of course the game must not be "railroaded" because then it wold be better just to watch a history video. But many players, I included, prefer that the world that we are playing remains "recognisable" in historical terms. So, yes, I like that outcomes are open and that you can change things, like make England raising to be a dominant power in 1500 or Spain remaining a dominant power after 1700, and so on. But I don't feel attracted to a game where Bourbonnais, Savoy and, Scotland are the dominant powers in Europe. Just Because I do not recognise that world, so my immersion in the game is lost. And I think that a majority of players feel the same.

Now, I understand if you prefer that way, and dominate Europe along the game playing Burgundy or Serbia. I suppose that there are room for both approaches, and you can always mod the game to your taste.
 
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Historical lucky nations is just dumb. We’re in a new history here. Go away with that bull.
I know I can turn them off but then can’t get achievements. Nothing about it makes sense.

How can you be ‘lucky’ when you have a pre determined bonus. That’s the opposite of luck.
It’s the worst feature of EU.
You are right. Lucky nations made sense in a time where there were no mission tree (btw i absolutely hate it the way it's designed, especially op mission rewards).
So the lucky nations do not just get the lucky nation bonus, they often get an OP mission tree on top of that.

I would love the see the OP missions removed (or just give them to minor nations). Else the lucky nation modifier just needs to go, because of the snowball effect.
 
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I don't like any of the two extremes that you are describing. Of course the game must not be "railroaded" because then it wold be better just to watch a history video. But many players, I included, prefer that the world that we are playing remains "recognisable" in historical terms. So, yes, I like that outcomes are open and that you can change things, like make England raising to be a dominant power in 1500 or Spain remaining a dominant power after 1700, and so on. But I don't feel attracted to a game where Bourbonnais, Savoy and, Scotland are the dominant powers in Europe. Just Because I do not recognise that world, so my immersion in the game is lost. And I think that a majority of players feel the same.

Now, I understand if you prefer that way, and dominate Europe along the game playing Burgundy or Serbia. I suppose that there are room for both approaches, and you can always mod the game to your taste.
By removing the extremely railroaded system, you don't automatically see random countries dominate Europe. But you would remove repetitive gameplay and scenarios.
In my opinion it's extremely boring to play the same country over and over, because it's just an constant min-maxing on how to click me threw missions, because their benefits are simply to high. Don't get me wrong it's okay to give a general idea on how to expand and improve, but they should just give minor rewards, so they can be treated as if they are optional and not a must-have.
 
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Well, what is more pertinent, the early statements and plans, or the finished product 8 years later? It's evident that the game has not been designed as a deep historical simulation of any kind, regardless of what the dev dairies said in 2012.

Now EU5, sure, you could petition the devs to take the game in a different direction from the decidedly historical flavored map painter of EU4. I wouldn't necessarily be against it at all, as long as it's fun. But I don't understand the urge to agitate for changes to the game that we both know aren't going to happen...
Most likely this threads feedback won't find its way in EU IV, but it can be observed for a potential EU V design.
 
By removing the extremely railroaded system, you don't automatically see random countries dominate Europe. But you would remove repetitive gameplay and scenarios.
In my opinion it's extremely boring to play the same country over and over, because it's just an constant min-maxing on how to click me threw missions, because their benefits are simply to high. Don't get me wrong it's okay to give a general idea on how to expand and improve, but they should just give minor rewards, so they can be treated as if they are optional and not a must-have.

I saw that in previous games, Burnonnais and Savoy conquering France and Scotland conquering England.

Lets put it that way. If I buy a WW2 game, of course I want to be able to win the battle of Midway playing Japan. Or win the whole war playing Germany. But winning WW2 paying Morocco just makes it no longer a WW2 game for me.
 
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The entire design of EU!V was poorly conceived, and shouldn't have been released in the state it was in. For those that have been here since the beginning, how many remember the many complete overhauls the game has experienced since inception? It was released as EUIII with better graphics and mana instead of sliders, but who was really clamoring for that? If they'd had a clearer vision of what they wanted the game to be and where they wanted it to go, and spent another year or two on planning and design, the game would've been much better for it. As it was, it was released in an unfinished state, and then continuously had core mechanics rewritten and grafted on while features that were touted at launch were dropped or never worked properly, and then stumbled along like some Frankenstein's monster. I've got over 4000 hours playing EU4, and I continue to enjoy it, but it really could've been so much better.
You've pretty much described PDX's entire business strategy.
 
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I'm surprised I didn't get a bunch of hate for my rant... yay me. Another thing that I don't like is these obscure tags and religions that they added. Why the hell is lebanon a releasable nation? I googled renaissance lebanon and google laughed at me and siri asked if I was sober. All the BS complaining on this forum about zoroastrianism and sihkism Icelandic cores and more buffs is kinda silly. Instead of adding fake shit just for the hell of it, expand on what we have and add nations that did/do exist in the timeframe. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, stop adding OP mission rewards. Also make them more difficult!!! Brunei's "impress XXXX" missions are so ridiculously OP. You get 2 free vassals for just improving relations?? C'mon, 1. too easy 2. the human will know to prioritize that before. When I bought that traves...... I mean expansion pack, I did it for map changes and missions. So if we get another xpac with just missions as a personal selling point, I might skip out on it.
 
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Advisor costs should be changed, as they should not be the same/same rate regardless your nation. For one thing, why would an Advisor cost 50%-100% of an entire small 1-province nation's entire GDP? Yes, if you haven't done the math yet, you can pay that high a percentage. Consider how out of balance, illogical that cost is, for a moment.
"A way" - would be to scale Advisor costs to a Percentage of GDP (we're talking total internal income, those top 3 lines at your budget tab would be an easy way to factor it). Maybe 10%, but it's an extremely silly thing for a nation that makes just 2 gold/month to pay 1 gold/month to an Advisor.

Advisor costs never made sense from the first time I saw how proportionally out of whack they are in contrast to national total earnings/GDP.
 
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I don't like any of the two extremes that you are describing. Of course the game must not be "railroaded" because then it wold be better just to watch a history video. But many players, I included, prefer that the world that we are playing remains "recognisable" in historical terms. So, yes, I like that outcomes are open and that you can change things, like make England raising to be a dominant power in 1500 or Spain remaining a dominant power after 1700, and so on. But I don't feel attracted to a game where Bourbonnais, Savoy and, Scotland are the dominant powers in Europe. Just Because I do not recognise that world, so my immersion in the game is lost. And I think that a majority of players feel the same.

Now, I understand if you prefer that way, and dominate Europe along the game playing Burgundy or Serbia. I suppose that there are room for both approaches, and you can always mod the game to your taste.
The scenario you described is already true for the rest of the world, namely in Asia, where the historical results NEVER occur. And frankly, I don't care about Europe being recognizable when the rest of the world (namely Asia) isn't recognizable. I get that it's cool for Euro-fans to enjoy their historical borders, but it takes away from the experience of being in a sandbox when things are railroaded as such. It takes away from the variance of the game and points it towards consistent results, not what a sandbox is about.
 
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