When I declare war, can I have a 'confirm' button please Paradox?

[zdlugasz]

Part of problem (IMO) is that DoW (and peace) screens are too small. Some things are below lower edge and I have to scroll to read it all (and sometimes it looks like everything is included, because paragraph break is at the bottom of screen, and I do not notice bar to scroll down). Also possible CBs: if there are two or more they can "hide".


Regarding extra confirmation - it can be pain as well, but maybe it could be an option.

 

[Oceanflex]

When declaring wars, breaking relationships, disbanding units, firing advisers, making event decisions, setting rivals and negotiating peace, PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING. You're acting as the sovereign of your tag, do not expect to be questioned if you make a bad call. I know it sucks to make a mistake, but that's why people play ironman. We play hardcore test of iron game modes so that there is no turning back, there is no second guess, there is only pain, victory, and resets. If I lose I'm done, but if I win, it's all the sweeter.

I would almost be ok with a confirm disbanding of a unit, but everything else I mentioned is in a diplomatic menu where you can pause an take all the time you need.

If the window is too small, I recommend using a "better ui" or "bigger (insert name of view) view" mod. I use bigger production, bigger diplomacy and bigger peace mods, as well as purple ui. They are all ironman compatible.

 

[aitaituo]

Probably the best solution would be a minigame where you discuss and draft a formal declaration of war with all the grievances allegedly committed against your nation along with all of your advisors. If you have no advisors, their sprites can be replaced with sacks of potatoes as your monarch suffers psychosis.

It might get annoying after the first couple of times, but at least you'll be able to explain eloquently exactly why AI Ryukyu must be destroyed.

 

[zdlugasz]

...

If the window is too small, I recommend using a "better ui" or "bigger (insert name of view) view" mod. I use bigger production, bigger diplomacy and bigger peace mods, as well as purple ui. They are all ironman compatible.

Thanks for recommendations.
But why should I search/invent/ and test hundreds of mods to have good playthrough experience? Should I not have right to require from Paradox to improve their product (for which I have paid)?

 

[lokiey0000000]

In theory this sounds nice but if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that if I'm at the point where I'm just clicking through and make this mistake one more button to click isn't really going to stop me.

 

[Umega]

I don't build cores via the production interface because of the confimation for the cores which is annoying. I mostly build cores from the overextension interface which don't have a confirmation button.

 

[drewbc32]

When declaring wars, breaking relationships, disbanding units, firing advisers, making event decisions, setting rivals and negotiating peace, PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING. You're acting as the sovereign of your tag, do not expect to be questioned if you make a bad call. I know it sucks to make a mistake, but that's why people play ironman. We play hardcore test of iron game modes so that there is no turning back, there is no second guess, there is only pain, victory, and resets. If I lose I'm done, but if I win, it's all the sweeter.

This was surprisingly deep lol.

 

[Oceanflex]

why should I search/invent/ and test hundreds of mods to have good playthrough experience? Should I not have right to require from Paradox to improve their product (for which I have paid)?

You have the right to suggest a change in their product. The problem with requiring PDS to change the EU4 interface is that not everyone agrees that they need to be larger, or have a confirmation. This means that, in order to please everyone, PDS would need to make many new UIs and that's a huge headache because it requires artist time and a lot of consideration from programmers to avoid graphical glitches. The option for a confirmation makes some sense, as an option, but the options menu for eu4 is pretty convoluted already.

I understand that mods can be hard to trust and hard to use in some cases, but IMO, EU4 works pretty cleanly with the Steam Workshop to make the experience very easy. You can disable a mod in the launcher with the click of a button even!

Oh, and thanks drew. I was channeling all the passion of the HC community from games like Diablo and Rouge.

 

[lymond]

When declaring wars, breaking relationships, disbanding units, firing advisers, making event decisions, setting rivals and negotiating peace, PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING. .....

Ha..this is very well said and there's no denying that what you say is true..in an ideal world..but it is also the exact type of response I was referring to above. I"m sure others like me get in hectic modes where our patience and ability to digest all the information and scenarios presented to us at a given time cause us not to always act as cautiously. It's simply one of those "easier said than done" statements, at least for a fair group of folks.

Also, I disagree about your Ironman statement and would argue the converse. Plenty of legit ways exist to totally bullocks an Ironman game, one way or another, but it should not be a result of deficiencies in the UI. At a minimum, we should get Stab Hit warnings. I don't care quite as much about CB issues as I agree that is something one should be paying closer attention too, although I have made CB mistakes.

(i use the bigger ui mod as well..that is not a solution...nor are mods solutions in general..as I've stated before that is the worst response on these forums)

 

[Oceanflex]

It's simply one of those "easier said than done" statements, at least for a fair group of folks.

I disagree about your Ironman statement and would argue the converse. Plenty of legit ways exist to totally bullocks an Ironman game, one way or another, but it should not be a result of deficiencies in the UI. At a minimum, we should get Stab Hit warnings. I don't care quite as much about CB issues as I agree that is something one should be paying closer attention too, although I have made CB mistakes.

Ok, see, there are opinions on the issue that disagree. Yours is that you want warning when something bad is going to happen. Mine is that I already see the warnings in the diplomacy screen, the only place I sometimes don't are in Call to Arms from allies against allies/RM partners that sometimes fire due to bugs. If I miss those warnings, subtle as they might be, I want the memory of the pain it caused me to give me that much more excitement/nervousness when I play next time. That's why permadeath single-save is so exhilirating for myself and many who play Hardcore/Ironman.

I do understand the other opinion, that you want to play ironman (for acheivements or as a weak-of-will proof mode) but don't want to make mistakes. I've been there before. I don't want your opinion to make my opinion invalid.

(i use the bigger ui mod as well..that is not a solution...nor are mods solutions in general..as I've stated before that is the worst response on these forums)

IMO, mods mean that we can both have our different opinions and both be pleased. You can have your warning (if someone's clever enough to make the mod) and I can have my intuition-only mode, all without PDS having to waste time supporting the other guy's probems. (subjective, yeah, but PDS's time is better spent on features everyone uses rather than corner cases of things WAD not being "cool.")

From the people that agree/disagree with OP, I can say that ~1/2 of people are on each side of the issue. Half of us like how things are, half of us don't.

 

[indika_tates]

You are being too harsh with "unlikes". What he said is right. Sometimes, when you are breaking a truce for example, a confirmation button doesn't hurt anyone. I remember a game I ruined because I didn't see that I was breaking a truce with someone I fought some time ago. -5 stability and WE with 90% of OE.

A warning like: Hey, you are going to break a truce, is ever welcomed.

 

[Illianor123]

You are being too harsh with "unlikes". What he said is right. Sometimes, when you are breaking a truce for example, a confirmation button doesn't hurt anyone. I remember a game I ruined because I didn't see that I was breaking a truce with someone I fought some time ago. -5 stability and WE with 90% of OE.

A warning like: Hey, you are going to break a truce, is ever welcomed.

That already is there on the declare war screen.

Extra confirmation boxes are equally going to be ignored if you ignore the warnings on the war declaration screen.

 

[wingzero890]

To all the downvoters out there, screw it then. Lets just make the UI as unintuitive and punishing as possible, because that's 'hardcore' right?

Confirmation boxes for negative actions like truce breaking, lowering autonomy, and other negative actions take nothing away from the game.

 

[Oceanflex]

Confirmation boxes for negative actions like truce breaking, lowering autonomy, and other negative actions take nothing away from the game.

That's false. Confirmation boxes will always take something away from an interface, be it suffering or simplisity. They do however also always add clicks, and that's a bad thing in most cases. The goal with any UI is to have it do what the user wants it to by default, requiring more clicks only to do something unusual. I've learned the UI as it is, and the addition of the confirmation box, while it might make me a bit sad (losing at most 10 years of game time and 100 WS, but likely far less) when I do something I would not-confirm, the extra clicks every time I DO confirm aren't worth it to me. I'm careful every time I declare war.

To all the downvoters out there, screw it then. Lets just make the UI as unintuitive and punishing as possible, because that's 'hardcore' right?

EU4 UI is, in my opinion, fairly intuitive for a Grand Strategy game. My intuition matches it quite well, after spending ~20 hours, and it got more intuitive as I spent more time. Compare the UI to something like Microsoft Excel, or this forum. There is no confirmation window on Excel or the Internet, and any undo button is only a half measure.

Edit; I just realised that Excel isn't a grand strategy game. Let's compare it to something like Starcraft, becuase I play that game a bunch and it's not PDX. There is no confirm box for making a building, and canceling a building onyl returns 75% of the building cost.

At best, I'd be ok with AI having 0 war enthusiasm and 0 length of war modifier for the first month of the war, so we can undo. This would simulate what happens if some idiot forged a DoW and I'm recanting idea. Make asking for demands impossible, like it is with <10 WS.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

DoW screen should just show impact more clearly/concisely. Other than that, the UI has so many legit big flaws like wrong costs for peace and just outright lacking accessibility to the game's rules that this is comparatively minor. UI has made significant strides since AoW came out and should continue in that direction, but the most important thing is that people who don't already know the game through trial and error don't have to use trial and error just to know the rules of the game they're playing. An improved dow screen would be nice too of course, but it's below that in priority. This game will always have a barrier to new players because its UI is daunting, but more clearly accessible rules/answers to "how do I play this" in-game would help lower the bar for new blood.

 

[NightKev]

It's quite ridiculous that the bigger UI mod(s) are still necessary. I played VeF recently and since they haven't updated their bigger UI mod I was stuck with the default sizes and god damn are those windows tiny. It takes an inane amount of scrolling to see anything in some of the windows and I completely understand how people can miss important details because of that.

 

[Docshadow]

Please, do not add more clicking to everything in the game... The UI is a huge leap of an improvement from the previous generation of the game and stands out as usable among the majority of grand strategy games (I'm looking at you click happy HOI3 [though I still love you] and look forward to the new hotness of the HOI4 UI).

I already purposefully hit the big red declare war button. Negative effects for each casus belli (or lack thereof) are in bold red text.
That's as much confirmation as is really needed.

Have I made mistakes with war decs? Sure have!
It taught me to read before I click.

Am I paying attention to far too many things on screen to keep track of a dialog? I have this handy pause button that I can use that stops the action for, literally, as long as I need to make a choice.

Being that I tend to do some late night gaming before bed, I also tend to make mistakes because I was sleepy. So, I tend to save before important events so that (because sleepy games are definitely not ironman games) so that I can save scum after making terrible decisions or dozing off and letting rebels and my enemies rampage across my lands for a decade.

Also, as has been said before... if all of these things are a terrible burden. Mods exist that can change these screens and you could probably even write your own triggers for confirmation screens. Or perhaps even bigger redder text.

Buying a product definitely gives you the right to voice an opinion. And even though egocentrism is super fun, it doesn't mean that a product has to be altered to meet what, in this case, is a very small minority or that customer base that has made an equal contribution.

 

[Oceanflex]

It's quite ridiculous that the bigger UI mod(s) are still necessary.

No. It's not. If you looked into why Johan doesn't want larger UI by default, or scaling UI, it's because Bigger doesn't mean Better. Large UI means that you have to click on a red x to close becuase the map is hidden, and often other UI windows are hidden. There's also the fact that larger UI doesn't work on smaller resolution screens. Scalable UI means more work on the back end to maintain, longer load times and increased file size.

There are probably other reasons too, because Johan knows that some people don't like the size of the UI, and he knows that happy people buy more DLC. Ok, I admit, I made up that last clause.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The point about #clicks/inputs to accomplish something is valid IMO. EU IV doesn't have too much suffering from that and it's an oft-overlooked part of UI. I feel a few of them like converting religions from the tab screen really doesn't need the prompt either, I usually slam "enter" just after clicking but every once in a while an event will time itself JUST perfectly to mess me up. This prompt doesn't come up for coring on that screen and that is the correct approach IMO. There are many thousands of clicks per game in EU IV for various reasons but prompts on things you do routinely that are easily cancelable and have minimal downside to start are not good candidates for a confirmation popup.

 

[ChildeR]

There are many thousands of clicks per game in EU IV for various reasons but prompts on things you do routinely that are easily cancelable and have minimal downside to start are not good candidates for a confirmation popup.

That's true. For example, the idea group unlock confirm should go when you have AoW (and thus can just immediately deselect the group at no cost).

However, a stabhitting DoW is very much not an easily cancelable minimal downside choice.