What is the worst achievement in game?

[petertju]

I think the most annoying is definitely the Carthago Delenda Est. Mostly because it is just a waiting game, same goes for achievements like reach tech 32 or that are only available after certain amount of time. Napoleon's Ambition was surprisingly annoying since I was done with my Nevers game and just had to wait for Age of Revolution.

RNG is always a factor in a game, I don't think Third Way is a bad achievement because it can become difficult through bad RNG, that is part of the hardness. Same for Pheasant Strut, the fact that you can get screwed by other nations or snake across the world doesn't make it a bad achievement, the RNG surrounding Prussia forming does make it worse, but not as bad as Carthago.

I actually really enjoy time based achievements, True Heir of Timur was actually quite a lot of fun. Normally time is a resource you have in abundance in EU4, it is nice to have to play when time is a limiting factor.

 

[iClipse]

100% it is The Pheasant Strut. Nothing even competes.

You have to rely on Prussia actually forming, which involves Poland failing [Danzig]; the region actually converting, and a nation getting all the required provinces. While it is not as rare as it was pre-Prussia patch; it's still pretty rare. Not only that; but it has to be a strong enough Prussia where you can have a war where the Prussians can actually lose 100,000 men in a single war. And then you have to snake across half the world to even try this; which involves going through the Ottomans or Russia in most cases.

It's not that hard of an achievement and relies on virtually no RNG. The start can be a bit dicey maybe, but with some proper vasal play you can easily beat Jaunpur or Bengal and become a dominant power in the region.

After conquering north India (+/- 1000-1500 dev) you're strong enough to beat Russia and just snake your way towards north Germany.

Regarding Prussia: Prussia is the only country that can form while being a vasal. So, your goal is simple: find a Saxon, Pomeranian or Prussian protestant vasal. If they don't exist, just find a nation you can release in a protestant province. Then vasal feed them the provinces to form Prussia. Give them money. Release the vasal. Declare. Don't occupy them, but just keep killing the troops that spawn, and you're ready. Super easy. The hard part is the start.

Anyway regarding the OP's question. Marie of Burgundy is pure RNG. I hate it. So my vote goes to them. Lotharingia itself was a fun tag, but do I now really have to play an entire campaign with the same country, same situation to get another chance at a female ruler? Sigh.

 

[Malecord]

That one where you have to start as an Asian nations and fight against Prussia while losing at least X amounts of units. Too much RNG and the other option is for you to create and feed Prussia just so you can beat them.

Another bad one in my opinions is the Hoarder achievement which requires you to have at least 13 cults. Thing is, getting a cult is RNG fest and forces you to, again, create artificial situations where you release tags and either keep pounding them until the event for the cult fire or ally them in the hopes that the event will fire.

The Milhouse pun is also pretty bad because if the AI happens to go centralised before you become Emperor that is the run killed.

And Cartago deleta est is one of the most boring achievements ever as it requires you to put the game in speed 5 for years and just wait.

Another bad one in my opinions is the Hoarder achievement which requires you to have at least 13 cults. Thing is, getting a cult is RNG fest and forces you to, again, create artificial situations where you release tags and either keep pounding them until the event for the cult fire or ally them in the hopes that the event will fire.

? That achievement imho is super easy. You just have to enter war to a nation with the desired religion and there you go. The only thing that go wrong is if you don't make in time to collect them before they disappear. But the only one that risk to disappear early are the other fetishist in Africa and you are close enough to get them before that happen (or better, make them disappear yourself). Apart from that it's just a matter of pushing in Asia and americas to collect the missing ones. Muslims and Christians will come in Africa by themselves.

 

[Nwaij]

Die please Die. You have to pray to RNG to get a really shitty ruler (which isn't a fun thing to have in its own), and then you have to pray some more that he lives long enough.

 

[lambda x.x]

Anyway regarding the OP's question. Marie of Burgundy is pure RNG. I hate it. So my vote goes to them. Lotharingia itself was a fun tag, but do I now really have to play an entire campaign with the same country, same situation to get another chance at a female ruler? Sigh.

It is RNG if you don't finish it during Marie's rein, but I personally like to interpret that achievement as a True heir-esque speedrun where your time limit is scripted Marie's death.

 

[EarlKonrad]

? That achievement imho is super easy. You just have to enter war to a nation with the desired religion and there you go. The only thing that go wrong is if you don't make in time to collect them before they disappear. But the only one that risk to disappear early are the other fetishist in Africa and you are close enough to get them before that happen (or better, make them disappear yourself). Apart from that it's just a matter of pushing in Asia and americas to collect the missing ones. Muslims and Christians will come in Africa by themselves.

I too thought it would be easy, but after fighting multiple wars with every single African nation and not getting all African cults I gave up on it. I'm pretty sure that the events related to getting new cults are somewhat bugged.

For instance, I got all 3 western Cults at once and I'm not sure why. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden I got 3 events at the same day, each for each of the Western Cults. Even after multiple wars I wasn't able to get any of the Madagascar Cults.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't mind most other acheivements, but The Pheasant Strut and the tightly timegated ones are too luck-reliant.

None of these depend on luck to get the achievement. Luck could influence how fast you finish them within timeframe, but for sufficiently skilled players they could get pheasant strut + time gated achievements within timeframe reliably. Approach + outlook matter for stuff like this.

Edit: Lotharingia is bugged right now since you can't get female heirs. Doing it as original Marie is the only way, wish I knew that before passing that point.

 

[iClipse]

It is RNG if you don't finish it during Marie's rein, but I personally like to interpret that achievement as a True heir-esque speedrun where your time limit is scripted Marie's death.

Good point. I'll try it again then. Didn't notice there was a scripted event (it's been a while, was my first 1.30 playthrough).

 

[Blust]

Cheryy picking can be done easily in 1-3 tries with ashigaga. Declare war against Ming asap obviously dont fight look for 2 years ingame, if a 3 star general is there, works nicly. Had it after 3 runs a friend on first try.

Ashikaga starts as a regency for an 8 years old boy. Can't DW Ming asap now.

 

[Dragonquack]

True Heir of Timur and Pheasant Strut are the worst imo

 

[petertju]

True Heir of Timur and Pheasant Strut are the worst imo

Why is True Heir of Timur the worst?

 

[Shiny Dog]

Most time-gated achievements are strong contenders for me, especially since they stuffed more and more achievements into it in recent years.
Why are you restricting this to roughly 50% to 20% of the game's timeframe? Why is it so important to "Basque in Glory" before the Age of Absolutism? If there were just a handful (such as "Big Blue Blob", "True Heir of Timur", and "Gold Rush" to name a few at least interesting ones), then it would be fine. A lot of achievements just didn't need the time restraint to be interesting.

However, the absolute worst achievement, IMO, is "Sun Invasion" because it goes completely against established mechanics and does not mention it.
It's not especially hard, and Madyas is kinda fun (their navy-focused NI is a fun romp, though not a very strong one). The problem is that you need to own 4 specific provinces in Mexico directly, meaning you can't form a colonial nation. Just... why? Why can't it be in a CN? Why are you requiring people to either migrate to the New World or finagle a vassal to take your entry province?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Time constraint is a major element of difficulty, and that an achievement isn't trivial to attain is part of what makes it an "achievement" in the traditional sense of the word. Interesting to see true heir of Timur get more mentions than eat your greens though, as the latter is also a time pressure achievement and if getting it w/o blocking absolutism age with trade trick it is the hardest one in the game most likely.

Sun invasion is garbo but at least you can rectify a mistake with it and get the achievement anyway. I don't think bad achievements like that due to internal inconsistency are quite as bad as achievements that don't depend much on player interaction, if at all...and instead depend on waiting and RNG.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I don't think I'd call the "do X before year/age" achievements bad. They certainly aren't for me as I prefer playing pretty slowly and patiently, but I am sure there are people who will enjoy the challenge of a time limit. It's not a bad design to have achievements targeting different types of players, especially when there are so many to choose from; I don't have to have every single one, it's more important to have fun.

 

[Shiny Dog]

Time constraint is a major element of difficulty, and that an achievement isn't trivial to attain is part of what makes it an "achievement" in the traditional sense of the word. Interesting to see true heir of Timur get more mentions than eat your greens though, as the latter is also a time pressure achievement and if getting it w/o blocking absolutism age with trade trick it is the hardest one in the game most likely.

Of course time constraint (or any constraint really) adds difficulty to achievements. I'm not saying all of them are bad either. I don't object to it in something like "True Heir of Timur" because you're probably going to conquer all of India anyway as the Mughals. Mughals have impressive ideas and a robust economy.
What I'm saying is: Are time-gates warranted to give you a sufficient challenge in a lot of these achievements?
You could remove the time constraint from "Eat Your Greens" and you'd still be conquering half of Asia as a two province minor with "ok" ideas.
You could remove the time constraint from "Basque in Glory" and you would still be beating 2-3 regional powers as a landlocked OPM while converting half of Iberia to a relatively minor culture.
Conversely, Gold Rush or BBB would be trivial without the time constraint.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Eat your greens would go from hardest achievement to ~medium to hard in an instant if you had until 1821 to do it. Same deal for Navarra, time constraint makes it go from hard to harder. It's okay to have stuff like that, most achievements in this game can be won with patience and buildup.

 

[O-Ren Ishii]

Carthago delenda est. The undisputed king of shittiness

+1

Good thing I had some save with Venice, where I also had to ruin campaign in order to gain that trade power achievement.

 

[Zaddy]

This is purely for personal subjective reasons, but World Conqueror. Not because I'm opposed to WC for some philosophical reason or anything, it was just the least fun thing I have ever done in this game. Getting to 1650 and then realizing that the rest of the game was going to be a European slogfest was such a bummer. I was done having fun with the game by that point but I finished anyways. I even put the game on speed 5 and sat on my phone after finishing to get to 1821 for that achievement too.

 

[Nwaij]

Lotharingia is bugged right now since you can't get female heirs. Doing it as original Marie is the only way, wish I knew that before passing that point.

You can, by event.

 

[JKiller96]

World conquest achievements. This type of achievement discourages development of the game towards where conquest of the entire world would be impossible, and just being able to conquer the entire world shouldn't be a limit on how deep the world is developed.