Common Sense is up on Steam now, but previous expansions didn’t go on sale. Perhaps they’re waiting for the Steam Summer Sale instead. Still, it’s annoying. I was looking forward to grabbing Art of War today.
KevinC
2022
Yeah, it’s gotta be related to the Steam sale, I was wondering how they would handle that. You didn’t have to tell me that Common Sense is available already, though, you bastard. I’m stuck at the office for another 6 hours at least! :)
Yay! Now we’re both unhappy!
There’s no way I’m starting a new campaign until I finish Witcher 3 and catch up on my backlog. But I’m really looking forward to trying out the Hansa with the new province development mechanics.
I’m unhappy too since I wanted to pick up The Art of War and El Dorado for cheap today. Art of War is 25% off over at GMG, if you consider a paltry 25% off a sale price!
That’s not bad, actually, when combined with a 20% voucher. Sold!
doh, I didn’t realize you could combine the two. That makes it 40% off. That IS quite tempting!
LOLOLOL. Now the previous DLC’s are all on sale on Steam, including AoW at 75% off. That’s a better deal than I got, but oh well.
IGThf
2029
A quick look into Common Sense:
- The Adm cost for coring will be… Ridiculous. The new development*10 looks more (at least 50% more) than in the old rules. And considering, the claims reduce it only by 10% instead of the old 25%…
- The new province occupying system where the siege takes only 1 siege tick when there’s no fort is interesting. But combined with the rebel uprisings it’s very unforgiving. Prepare for the +10 years of Separatism if you don’t have a strong enough army for every province in a <1 month distance.
- The looting is funny. Now there’s a reason to leave troops on occupied land. :-)
- The addition of humiliation to the normal provinces+ducats+warrep combo when you have a lot of WS to spare is a very nice bonus. You can get 50+ PP in the first war you win as WL.
That’s all for first impressions.
Tim_N
2030
I think generally this makes alot of sense. If you have a province full of 50,000 peasants, no castles/forts or loyal army soldiers present, and 25,000 of them decide to take up arms against you, it is silly to have them “siege” anything. They take their land instantly, and wait for the inevitable assault from their overlord. I agree 10 years of separatism makes little sense in this context. Perhaps if they were to win a war between one of your armies then they get 10 years of separatism instead of successfully “sieging” a province with no fort.
IGThf
2031
Ohh, just remembered something else…
The new mandatory “finish the army travel if it’s beyond 50%” bugged the system a bit (I hope it’s just a bug and not intended).
Unfortunately I don’t remember in which scenario it did, but the travel progress reseted when issuing a new order through the same adjancent province. In the old rules the army would continue travel, but now it resets the already travelled distance. I don’t remember if it was during the first half of the travel or when it was already locked (most probably the first, otherwise it could be abused to avoid the new mechanic somewhat).
It’s not as painful in dense areas like Europe where travel times are single digit days, but somewhere like Siberia it can even be a month loss.
Picked up the “complete” set on Steam yesterday. I’ve had the game on my wishlist for a while and couldn’t pass up 75% off on the base game + all DLCs.
Fired it up last night and was pretty instantly overwhelmed. Didn’t help that the tutorial got stuck because the next step was “build a building in London” but in London all the buildings were blocked because “your tech level isn’t high enough”.
Any recommendations for how a new player should jump in to this?
KevinC
2033
Screw the tutorials, especially since it sounds like the Building change they just rolled out borked it. Woops :)
Don’t get intimidated. Jump in as Portugal and the game will give you some handy missions like forming a royal marriage and alliance with your neighbor, Castile. Do so and from there you’re in a nice quiet corner of the world and are free to experiment. If you want to learn warfare, there’s Morocco to the south (just be careful, you’ll want Castile’s help). If you want to colonize, the world is your oyster.
Just poke around with the game and don’t worry about pulling levers and pushing buttons to see what they do. This is your organic tutorial and treat it as such. Take pride as you lead the Portuguese people into disaster after disaster. :)
In all seriousness, though, I personally find the in-game tooltips and notification prompts are enough to pick things up as you go. I don’t mean that you’ll immediately have an understanding of everything, far from it, but you can start playing. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and don’t feel like you have to be doing something at all times. There will be slow periods without much activity, especially at the start, and that’s okay. You’re not doing anything wrong. This is why the game was set up with a variable speed setting. Bumping it to 5 briefly is like the “End Turn” button at the beginning of 4X TBS games.
Someone can probably link an awesome Let’s Play series if that’s your thing, but they don’t work for me. I learned this game best just by jumping in and understanding that I would likely be running my country into ruin the first time through.
IGThf
2034
Made some testing (randomly moving around my troops and checking the arrival date)…
Anytime I give a new move order, the already traveled distance is reset. In each and every case.
So the current implementation of the new mechanic backfired. You can still cancel movement even at the last day, but you can’t change routes unless you don’t mind losing time. :-/
KevinC
2035
I can’t imagine that’s intended, but I didn’t see anything on a (very fast) skim of the Bug forum. You report the issue, if you have the time!
KevinC
2036
Actually, I just saw in the upcoming hotfix patch notes that this has been fixed.
I am curious as to what nations everyone likes to play. It goes without saying that the Ottomans are fun if you want constant land wars and Portugal is great for exploration.
I believe my personal favorite is Ethiopia. You start off with an exceptionally strong leader, the ability to make a couple of good friends and a couple avenues of obvious attack. So fast expansion is possible. But the ever-present danger of the Mamluks and the difficulty (due to religion and distance) of trying to entice the Ottomans or Timurids to act as your big brother gives a great tension when playing Ethiopia. Plus you also have the opportunity to colonize the area around you, islands in the Indian Ocean and/or South Africa.
CraigM
2038
Brandenburg is a fun one. An underdog early, but if you can get powered up and form Prussia it is a beast.
Trying to form Italy was my favorite challenge in EUIII. Haven’t tried a Naples or Milan game in EUIV yet.
Ottomans have been fun, but apparently tech level 19 is kinda a big deal in the Western/ Ottoman split. Just hit that and suddenly my losses versus France and Austria have become a problem.
KevinC
2039
I’ve never played Ethiopia, but that sounds like fun. I might have to give that a shot!
meeper
2040
Mamluks have been my go-to nation for the last six months or so. Provided you can axe the Ottomans, the world is really your oyster as you can easily outpace the euros to SE Asia and the east coast of Africa. I keep telling myself that I’m going to form Egypt and thrust into HRE, but I always seem to wind up forming Arabia and unifying Islam.
I think I’ll have to try a new nation in CS. Depending on how well the vertical build stuff works, I may switch back to playing as Scotland.
