Why I still think EU is the worst one of PI's 4 major series

[Freudia]

Care to elaborate, this makes no sense to me?

"If you maintain your current pacing when you get a junk ruler, you'll run into a shortage of points. Therefore, if you slow down or hold back (also known as gimping yourself), you'll have more points!"

The strategy you're suggesting is literally just do less.

 

[Aries666]

Sorry I can not see how this:

Including power projection you directly influence 4 points. On the flip side there is a lot you can do to affect monarch point expenditure, reducing coring cost, annex cost, tech cost etc etc. So actually even with a terrible ruler you still have a lot of influence on mp generation and expenditure and if you have been planning ahead, i.e. using strategy, you are rarely short of mp's.

equals this:

"If you maintain your current pacing when you get a junk ruler, you'll run into a shortage of points. Therefore, if you slow down or hold back (also known as gimping yourself), you'll have more points!"

The point I made if that even with a bad ruler you still have a lot of control over mp generation and expenditure. I said nothing of expansion or pacing.

 

[Freudia]

Sorry I can not see how this:

Including power projection you directly influence 4 points. On the flip side there is a lot you can do to affect monarch point expenditure, reducing coring cost, annex cost, tech cost etc etc. So actually even with a terrible ruler you still have a lot of influence on mp generation and expenditure and if you have been planning ahead, i.e. using strategy, you are rarely short of mp's.

equals this:

"If you maintain your current pacing when you get a junk ruler, you'll run into a shortage of points. Therefore, if you slow down or hold back (also known as gimping yourself), you'll have more points!"

The point I made if that even with a bad ruler you still have a lot of control over mp generation and expenditure. I said nothing of expansion or pacing.

You get more control, but rolling a junk ruler basically means that your control is entirely equivalent to just doing less stuff, because you have less points overall and nearly everything in the game is tied to them.

The side effect is that an equal-strength nation to yours who doesn't roll a junk ruler is able to do so much more than you purely due to not getting shafted by RNG, with no player skill required.

 

[Aries666]

You get more control, but rolling a junk ruler basically means that your control is entirely equivalent to just doing less stuff, because you have less points overall and nearly everything in the game is tied to them.

The side effect is that an equal-strength nation to yours who doesn't roll a junk ruler is able to do so much more than you purely due to not getting shafted by RNG, with no player skill required.

If you have set yourself up to specialise in direct annexation, mass vassals, reduced tech cost, the effect of a poor ruler can be more or less negated. However, I agree that particularly early in the game or if you are expanding in manner your country is not well suited for then a 0/0/0 will have significant detrimental affect vs a 6/6/6.

 

[James The 1st]

But they are not direct number operation games. Look at chess, a strategy boardgame, and you will find every step you made is very hard to value, and very hard to know the consequences. Unluckly, EU4 is not. Everything is as obvious as they were placed on the table.

All games that involve getting victory points are number based. Chess isn't that complex. Because of the lack of random variance, chess just comes down to memorizing patterns, which is why there are computer chess players that are really good.

 

[Mikalos]

I'd like it if it wasn't so damn random! You march a 30 stack into an 8 stack, and just get curb-stomped because they rolled higher! I tried it again just tonight, but the same thing happens!

agincourt says hi

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Cities and historical occurrences aren't capable of human speech.

 

[sadhukar]

I know that feel bro.
Vanilla is boring, try some of the better mods like MEIOU. The main problem of Eu4 is too much focus on expansion, warfare and abusing the trade mechanics to make sure you are unbeatable by the end of the first century of the gameplay. Then keep steamrolling and roflstomping until you get bored. And with the current mechanics it still is EUROPA Universalis, making sure that playing anything outside Europe just feel retarded, because WHATEVER you do over 400 years, you still remain an inferior civilization compared to their predestined übermensch genes. Has anyone ever been as a far as to like think that something might be wrong with the current trade mechanic also?
In Eu3 at least non-Europeans could get filthy rich by solely focusing on trade, alas now there seems some sort of mysterious magical force that keeps moving stuff always in one direction towards a few predestined Europeans nodes... also known as magic.

Victoria best game ever btw.

What does MEIOU add which makes the game better?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you have set yourself up to specialise in direct annexation, mass vassals, reduced tech cost, the effect of a poor ruler can be more or less negated. However, I agree that particularly early in the game or if you are expanding in manner your country is not well suited for then a 0/0/0 will have significant detrimental affect vs a 6/6/6.

Earlygame is the worst and most damaging by far, because often 50+ power projection isn't realistic yet and there's no way you can sit on +3 advisors across the board, so a proportionately larger amount of your potential is reliant on ruler quality, and this is really nasty if you're in a non-western/eastern/ottoman group. For example in 1.7 Inca could finish westernizing in the late 1400's, where Maya or unlucky Aztec realistically couldn't until 1520+. This has large ramifications on catch up rate, rate at which one can actually get +3 advisors, and so forth.

You also have some diminishing return. It isn't super strong diminishing return, but the difference between a 3/3/3 and a 6/6/6 is not as punishing as that of a 3/3/3 and 0/0/0. Finally, you have the utter horsecrap that is regency councils; getting one of those in the first 10-15 years can easily be ruinous if it's long.

The designers put in republics for players who want more agency over their monarch points. However, they missed the point in that they made the requirements for becoming one

1. Gimp you in the early game (you have to stay small-ish until you complete 2 groups, which can be a very long time if you're not western and pretty long even if you are in some cases).
2. Rely entirely on random luck to avoid a luck dependent government (IE the weak claim/no heir thing).

In 1.6, the patch notes said that noble rebels would force you into a republic, and that was true in 1.6 and 1.7. Then in 1.8 this was removed, but suddenly they decided that this was no longer worth mentioning, despite that it was an important part of your choices during westernization (take a hit to 50 RT and pay out big money in a tough period...well at least it was tough in 1.7...or stay as a monarchy and fight the rebels/westernize slower).

This puts us back at 1.5 crap. Jump through hoops and hope you get lucky in order to avoid having to get lucky (derp), or just sit on the luckbox monarchies all game long. The most annoying part of the whole nonsense is that by the time you can willingly switch into a republic (without the luck of revolutionary rebels which still flip you, but may or may not ever touch your capitol to do so), the negative impact of poor ruler luck is diminished and in most cases you were either screwed or not screwed already.

Monarch points and player agency in them is off kilter and remains bad design, even if the pay-wall NF feature helps it to a degree.

 

[Enewald]

What does MEIOU add which makes the game better?

Lot of more stuff. Including earlier start, better map, prettier map, more events, harder religious conversion, more flavour for rulers. It might not change the basic concepts of the game, but still beats vanilla easily.

 

[LinusLinothorax]

"computers cannot handle it" is the single most important argument as to why it shouldn't, actually, but thanks for playing, also "i dont want a balanced game!" means nobody in power will ever listen to your dumb shit ideas.

If you have no idea about what topic the discussion was and how my post was meaned, i guess you just should stfu.

 

[Suchtschwind]

Oh boy i loved EU2 with AGCEEP Mod.

- way more events (EU2 EEP)
- settings to put on historical monarchs (EU2)
- a better map with edgy borders
- economic development (victoria)
- population growing, declining, moving, changing (victoria)
- religion (victoria)
- technology (HoI, Crusader Kings)
- warfare (HoI)

in my opinion Europa Universalis biggest point was that every game was like an little history lesson. Are you able to change the destiny? ... i like EU4 but its not the best in any category.

By the way is there something like AGCEEP for EU4 or just Events?

 

[Beagá]

I like to play grand strategy games before, and I love EU, since I have tried VIC2 through my friend's computer and played CK2 in a peaceful night. I find EU somewhat boring then. When EU4 is there I bought it and played for days. I dropped it finally. It is a better version of EU3 and much more balanced than games like VIC2 or CK2, with fewer bugs and more detailed mechanics, I admit, but still lack something so called SOUL.

Yes.

EU4 has tons of country tags. The price you pay for adding more complexity is making performance drag more for old PCs.

That said I agree that the game lacks complexity in some areas, to the extent that it does make it have less depth than it could.

But it´s still better than HOI 3

 

[Myrkul]

By the way is there something like AGCEEP for EU4 or just Events?

Sadly, no. The general consensus around these parts is that EU2's railroading was... highly unpopular, and no one has really tried to port the AGCEEP events to EU4.

 

[Freudia]

Sadly, no. The general consensus around these parts is that EU2's railroading was... highly unpopular, and no one has really tried to port the AGCEEP events to EU4.

Just make them fire with sensible requirements (for example, make the Burgundian Inheritance's triggers require Burgundy's ruler actually dying during battle, and not just magically kill him just because he's losing a war) and I'd be totally fine with historical events firing. Bonus points if you make them fire on circumstances and not just tethered to select nations (for example, a nation like Bohemia usurps Austria's rule of the HRE very early; 200 years later they're still in power and they get a female heir. Pragmatic Sanction fires for Bohemia!).

There's a way to do historical events without railroading the game to hell; I can only imagine the main reason we don't have it yet is due to coding. Coding something like my Pragmatic Sanction idea might not be feasible for EUIV; at least not yet.

 

[golden009]

You see, I may be a casual, but I love EU4. It's a great game for those 95% of people who aren't "fanatics", in my opinion. You guys seem to like V2 because of the micromanagement, but that's the kind of thing that I didn't want. I'm not great at this game by any means, and that's what makes it fun for me. It might get boring after 500 hours, but doesn't any game?

 

[Mikalos]

You see, I may be a casual, but I love EU4. It's a great game for those 95% of people who aren't "fanatics", in my opinion. You guys seem to like V2 because of the micromanagement, but that's the kind of thing that I didn't want. I'm not great at this game by any means, and that's what makes it fun for me. It might get boring after 500 hours, but doesn't any game?

than the invisible hand of the AI is the way for you to play V2

nevermind your industrialization wont really kick off til around 1890

 

[darthfanta]

HoI is the worst PI title out of the big four.

 

[Jokolytic]

This game IS EUROPA Universalis.

We need a lot more Europa, a lot less Universalis.

 

[Epicduke]

This game IS EUROPA Universalis.

We need a lot more Europa, a lot less Universalis.

The name was ripped off of the original board game. Also, Crusader Kings have a far longer timeline than the actual crusades. Same with Victoria.