Europa Universalis 4

I thought it was mediocre overall and needs a expansion or two to really hold my interest, long term. I attribute that more to them trying something new and different and not succeeding than a cynical attempt to bilk their customers, though.

That’s mostly due to the fact that I’ve found it the outlier, rather than the norm. I thought CK2, EU4, and HOI4 were good and “complete” games at 1.0. They of course had the advantage of being sequels to existing games, which brings me back to the fact that Stellaris was trying something new for them.

I have the same problem with CK2. I own it and and a few of the DLC packs and I simply do not know what to do. I am often bored and aimless when playing it.

Thanks, I did forget I could do that. I guess I’m not dedicated enough these days to find the patch that strikes the perfect balance between fixes and not unbalancing the core game. But I might actually go back to ck2 one day with an early patch.

I guess what I’m trying to say is paradox’s current business model is a double edged sword. I was enthusiastic initially since I was happy to fund more games I enjoyed and ensure they did well as a company. But recently it feels like they’re making infinite expansions not because the games need them, but because that’s how they make money. The game design seems to take a bit of a back seat to that. That’s somewhat unsettling to me considering how most of us feel about f2p games here and the impact of that business model on design. But I suppose being able to freeze the game version helps

Your comments on Stellaris match my feelings. This essentially means don’t bother with PDX unless they have an old game to mine mechanics out of, unless you like early access.

I agree that HOI4, for whatever flaws it has, feels mechanically richer than Stellaris. I don’t know how it compares to HOI3 but that seems controversial among their fans.

But, based on Stellaris alone, I doubt I’ll ever buy another PDX title at release. I judge developers on if they ever disappointed me, not their goodwill they built with one or two goldstrikes. YMMV!

But the core game isn’t thrown off that much to make it unenjoyable. Sure, I bet there are some hardcore people out there that think the patches really screws up the game, but for most people? It really isn’t that big of a issue from what I have played.

I got to say with EU4 I’m not sure what the beef is. Out of the gate it was truly a fully fleshed out and fantastic strategy game, they’ve expanded on the foundations in a number of ways, you can choose to keep the original out of box settings and not update. Seems like a win-win for everyone.

I’m not the biggest fan of Paradox’s feature creep, I think it jams up the intricate clock they originally created, but I do give them credit for allowing the player to determine what works best for them.

I do not understand it either. The original game was both robust and a lot of fun. The best DLCs change things up enough to make it seem like I am playing a heavily modded version of EU IV. They help keep the game fresh while the solid core drives the compelling game play.

Looks like the big (free) 1.19 update may be out in beta form as early as Thursday, so it’s getting close!

Oh no. This is not good, not good at all.

I haven’t played EU4 heavily for at least 2 expansions or so. I’ll pop in and play a game to play with the new features, but I haven’t kept going back and hammering away at it. Part of that is other games distracting me and the other part is I already have an obscene amount of hours played in the game. Whenever I hit a game that hard I like to let it lie fallow for a while so it feels fresh when I come back to it.

Ultimately, I’m getting about 2-3 expansions worth of improvements all at once, as I’d forgotten a bunch of the stuff they have added over the last year. One of my favorite games of all time just got significantly better. It’s like someone told a crack addict “Hey, you know that crack you’re addicted to? Well guess what, they figured out how to add more crack to crack. Enjoy!”.

Oh well, good for me I have a bunch of vacation time coming up for the remainder of the year and no real plans of how to spend it. :)

Me either Kevin. Granted that is mostly because in the last month my total gaming time can be measured in the single digits. It has been not great.

Really need to finish my one campaign so I can update. So many new toys!

You scared the crap out of me! I thought something awful had happened to someone at Paradox or a lead had left! Had to read a couple times to make sure it was great news you were referring to. Whew! LOL

Sometimes it’s the little things that I appreciate the most.

ABOUT GOD DAMN TIME!

Even as someone who understood the trade systems well enough to control them, this is a huge boost.

Thanksgiving/Holiday sales goal: catch up on EU4 expansions…

Has that tool-tip ever been accurate though? I know there’s a lot of moving parts as an explanation why it might be only an estimate, but I don’t think it’s ever even been in the same ballpark for me. I generally ignore it.

Or did you mean the fleet renaming? :)

I too have an obscene amount of hours (and I played EU long before it was on Steam, eek) and haven’t returned, but the recent release and updates is threatening to pull me back in. :(

Yeah same.

Because I’m dumb when it comes to this game still, what are you excited about?

So, there’s a category of ship called Light Ships. They’re not great in a stand-up fight, but they’re very useful when protecting trade nodes, which gives you more Trade Power. In simple terms, Trade Power is how much you can dip into the Gold Bucket in a particular center of trade. So if I want to direct more trade from Egypt towards Constantinople, I’ll send a Merchant down there and then send a fleet of Light Ships to give me trade power in the area.

The thing is, the trade system is really fluid and has a lot of variables, so it’s hard to even get a ballpark figure of how extra Trade Power in Node X will translate into extra gold in your coffers each month. Especially because these light ships not only have a cost to build, but there’s a cost to maintain them each month too.

So the tooltip is nice, because it’s showing me those effects. Now granted, that’s going to fluctuate wildly but I’m not interested in a hard number, I’m just interested in a ballpark figure to determine where those 10 light ships can be put to best use. “Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck?”, basically.

Thanks to the tooltips, which didn’t use to exist, I could see that adding that extra trade power to the Constantinople node really didn’t have much of an effect at all, since I already had so much trade power there. It was hardly worth the cost of the ships But sending the fleet to Alexandria or Aleppo trade routes would have a much greater effect to the bottom line. I ended up sending the ships to Alexandria and got a nice tick up in my trade income.

Previously, I’d have to kind of guess where to send them, and then wait a month or two and see if I noticed a difference (and then wash rinse and repeat for several other nodes). The “new” (to me, they may have been there for quite a while) tooltip removed a lot of that guesswork and at least let me make a quick informed decision on where my fleet might be more effective.

Sadly you still mostly need to guess. The tooltip is wildly inaccurate (this isn’t just a case of fluidity, but rather it being off by 100% in either direction). Also, it’s totally useless for nodes where you’re looking to augment an existing trading fleet.

Yeah, it seems as if the new fleet income increase counts the values as if there are no other light ships protecting trade there. Even as a ballpark value, you should use it as the only decision maker if there is a really big difference in the projected income.

And it’s in the game for a good while now. :-)