Which patch should I play for historic accuracy?

[Heindrich]

It's been a few months and three DLCs since I played EUIV... I have finally bought Mandate of Heaven and looking forward to a new Ming campaign.

Obviously I know "Ming is op!" and there will be no real challenge regardless of which patch I play, but from what little research I've done, it seems that the newest patch has really crippled the Ottomans, who often don't rise as a great power at all? Is this true?

Aside from my direct involvement, I'd prefer for the rest of the world to develop as historically accurately as possible, the rise of the Habsburg, the formation of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Ottomans are among the fundamental great processes/stories of the EUIV timeframe, and not seeing it happen would be quite immersion breaking for me.

So... tl:dr which patch should I play for maximum historic accuracy? (East Asia does not need to be considered since I will directly affect what happens there).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Current patch, select Jan 1, 1820 as start date.

 

[Heindrich]

What exactly are u disagreeing with? You're saying that the Ottomans are not crippled in the new patch?

 

[Fri996]

1492 seems to generally develop mostly historically.

 

[Sfan]

Troll answer: I think Victoria II has a pretty good representation of the EU4 historical outcome. But then, HOI4 is even better as it's later, and it's also even more railroaded.

Real answer: Every patch tries to add accuracy, and sometimes fail. Some regions are more accurate than they used to, and that's the general trend, but that's a hard balance between gameplay, AI improvements, new mechanics, historical accuracy... People usually don't like railroading events from what I saw of the community, and the trend is more to make it a sandbox where each historical event has a resonably high chance of happening, but none happens all the time. That's what happened to the Ottomans this patch, they went from 99% success to 60-70% success, which led to buckets of tears, but please don't make it a new Ottoman thread so ignore that if you disagree. That's still not perfect, mostly because every patch adds more depth with more events and more tags, and more events and more tags means more possibilities for the game to have an ahistorical end, with a more historical path along the way. Do you see what I mean?
Overall, the reason why your question is a bit silly and why people disagree is that EU4 is not a game made to replicate history. It's a sandbox strategy game set within an historical setup, with some kind of railroading, but it's not scripted like HOI.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What exactly are u disagreeing with? You're saying that the Ottomans are not crippled in the new patch?

I am disagreeing with the premise compared to the core game mechanics in any patch ever.

You are requesting something that, if playing from the 1444 start, is not self-consistent (it necessarily can't be). Asking for historical progression without mechanics that afford historical causes is incoherent. Whatever your immersion source actually is, it *can't* be history. History obeyed causality. Things happening like you describe in the game must ignore it unless EU 4 gets an incredible-game altering mechanical overhaul across the board.

No causality = no historical accuracy, regardless of the outcome. You need mechanics that better model causality, and those are not in EU 4.

 

[Swami]

I honestly also like historical plausible outcomes. Honestly I think there should be better anti blobbing mechanics, but that would probably mean changes to culture, coring, rebels and coalitions. To me it doesnt have to be the same outcome as history, but the outcome should be something that could possibly have happened.

 

[KubiG37]

If you don't mind losing Ironman status, you should perhaps try 'Age of Enlightenment' mod instead of trying vanilla game (after it's made compatible with 1.23, or play it on 1.22 now). It is a railroading mod focusing on major historical events, quite a lot on Ming actually. It forces things like Qing, Prussia, Mughals, French revolution, historical personal unions, ... Basically things that never happen on their own.

This game isn't made to be really historical, Victoria II / HoI IV is much more accurate, but it's a lot easier to maintain it with their much shorter time frames...

 

[Mauer]

Ottomans are doing more than fine in my current game, current #1 power.