I have a problem…
Even though I still haven’t played in years I’m having trouble resisting buying the music and content packs with the buy 2 get one free sale at the PAradox store. I’ve got the cart loaded up. The sale ends today so I only have a a little more to wait. Maybe I should go do some errands and let it expire. Those units look cool.
If anything I should get something I have a high chance of playing.
I think you should hold off, if you’re not planning on playing the game anytime soon to enjoy them!
I’m all about patronizing game developers I enjoy, but Paradox seems to be doing just fine. Give it a pass, I’m sure there’ll be another sale!
Yeah, I know
First I was just thinking about the music packs because I always thought the EU music was good. Then I kept looking at all those colorful uniforms and thought they looked cool too.
I always say EU IV is probably the best game that I don’t play. I played as Portugal at release and then again 1X later. I think I may have started a game as Brandenburg too. Despite it being a little overwhelming for novices, I actually liked it. But for some reason every time I think about playing it I just can’t muster the activation energy to start a game.
I really don’t know why this is a game I just can’t start up. I’ve put 1000s of hours into Civ IV, 700 into Civ V, and 150+ into Civ VI. Sometimes I think about how cool playing all the different nations in EU IV would be, but never pull the trigger. Maybe you can come over to my house and make me play the damn game :-)
My ultimate game would be if Paradox based a Civ like game off of EU IV, with starting in an early age, have exploration, and all those elements - but at the higher EU IV level instead of a Civ like level.
I get this way with strategy games a lot when I’m getting a little mentally tired, whether it’s from work or other things going on in life. They sound like fun, but when I sit down to play them I just can’t do it. Either I can’t get into it, or there’s this wall of lack of motivation, even though everything sounds like I should be having fun!
This happened to me with Age of Wonders 3 and GalCiv3 a while back, around the time they released. I love the Age of Wonders series so I was really excited to play the new one. But when it came out it just… either I couldn’t fire it up, or if I did I couldn’t make it past a handful of turns before I’d shut it down. Then about a month later, I took a week off of work and had a nice staycation. I played the hell out of AOW3 and GC3. Suddenly I was thoroughly enjoying both games!
I notice this doesn’t happen to games that I’m very familiar and comfortable with, like EU4. But a new strategy game or one that I haven’t played in a long time and would have to relearn? Sounds exhausting. Total War 2 is like that for me right now, despite loving the first one. And I haven’t been able to fire up Oriental Empires yet. But EU4, with it being so familiar, I can dive into that any time.
I know how you feel. With other games I always over come it like you did, but with EU IV I just can’t seem to get over the hump. I was that way with Crusader Kings 2, but I just didn’t find that game much fun.
I like to start small in strategy 4X games and I know there are a lot of countries that I can do so in EU IV. That’s why I always have played Portugal in EU 2,3 and 4.
I love AoW3 too. That’s another one I need to pay again. I have put 300+ hours into that one, but it deserves some more play.
I can see EU IV eating up 100s of hours if I could just get rolling. I REALLY wish Paradox kept their documentation up to date. I don’t like watching videos.
One last question…
If I were to play Portugal again, do you know what content packs would effect my game / give Portugal new unit graphics?
I believe the Conquest of Paradise pack has new units for Portugal. So does this one (along with a lot of other European nations).
The wiki has a nice section for just the cosmetics. I’d CTRL-F Portugal through it (those were the only two I saw in a very brief search). :)
Thanks for you help!
OK, I ennded up getting the ones you mentioned plus several more since they were in the areas I’d likely play.
If I end up playing in other geographical areas - like Asia, the Middle East, or Russa then I’ll consider other ones, or if I end up actually playing the game :-)
The new one coming out that focuses on England / Ireland / Scotland Sounds interesting.
Right on!
Your post made me notice that Paradox seems to have removed all the cosmetics from the Steam store page? Or am I blind? That’s a good change, if so. With Steam not supporting categorization of DLC, it was getting ridiculously cluttered after 4.5 years of post-release development.
The content packs are buried on the pages for each expansion.
This change is a pain in the ass. It has been really hard figuring out what EUIV DLC I own now. Steam says I don’t own those combined packs but I actually do own much of the content in them. I guess now I need to dig through all my emails?
I know Paradox probably got tired of people screenshooting their massive DLC lists to prove points but this change was not helpful from my perspective.
Oh I didn’t notice that, I can see why that would be a pain. Not as convenient as having it right there in one place, but you can see what DLCs you have from your Library still (including the cosmetics), so at least you don’t have to dig through emails.
I’m in the back half of a Portugal game. Heavily colonized Brazil, Columbia, Caribbean, Mexico, and Louisiana (too feed Brazil and Caribbean trade nodes) and also colonizing Australia for the hell of it. Militarily I’ve left Europe alone and focused on violent expansion in Africa, eliminating Morocco and Tlemcen as well as colonizing about 75% of the Ivory Coast and annexing most of West Africa, to feed Sevilla node.
All this in support of some weird goal I have of opening multiple fronts against Tunis and the Ottomans through those uncolonized African province lanes. Long, stable allies in Spain and France to help when that day comes.
Weird goals are best goals! That’s awesome, I hope you report back when you take it to the Ottomans!
There’s a new dev diary today that discusses Naval Doctrines and some new idea groups for the Low Countries. It’s mostly minor things, so my guess is the release of the immersion pack isn’t far away.
So I have jumped from 1.9 to 1.24 and have been put a decent amount of time in.
Holy cow are things different. First generic thoughts on changes.
One big change is the manpower model. Estates, states, sailors, all change fundamental things of how wars are engaged. At once sailors make some of my methods much less effective. In the past I loved to engage in guerilla wars on the oceans. Particularly when I had inferior forces. Let their fleet come to me, jump out and battle, wait until shortly before month end, move into port to repair, jump back out. It was very effective. Doubly so if it was a landing fleet, done right I could buy time to reposition armies, or occasionally take out stacks on the sea. It still works, but much less so than before. Having sailors be a unique type of resource means that it is much harder, as an inferior naval power, to win victories on the seas. Attrition is no longer just about a ship, but the men onboard.
Additionally estates change, slightly, how I can interact with them. Now in a big country it may not be hugely significant, hi France, but when playing as Serbia? I damn well noticed their impact. Really it seems to be something that gives small countries some meaningful options. That administrative power boost for clergy is nice, and at the price of some ducats is very useful. Again, they’re not always important, but they do lead to some interesting interactions in countries that otherwise might put on speed 5 and wait.
States? Bleh. It seems to be a straight debuff to expansion. Makes coring much more expensive, or makes the land much less useful.
Another change I noticed was the change to taking lands in peace being limited to your colonial range. That does seem sensible, and also helpful at curbing some abusive tactics. Minor, but there.
But the whole covert and sabotage mechanics? That was interesting. I’ve not gone deep enough to see how it impacts things mid to late game, I’ve yet to go beyond 1500 yet, but it seems like providing more flexibility is nice. The ‘build a spy network’ and spending network points definitely is a subtle change with potentially big impacts. Let’s see how I feel about it in 100 hours. Lets face it, it has never been the most interesting system. Supporting rebels is so rarely worth it. Even if you drive an enemy war exhaustion to 20, and immediately support rebels, they almost never fire. So covert actions is basically the ‘fabricate claim’ button.
So at first I tried, repeatedly, against the wall that is a Serbia run. It is more irritating than I imagined. Challenging, yes, and possible, but it requires lots of luck. If the Mamelukes never attack the Ottomans? You’re in trouble.
Now early on I always found expansion best through Venice. Ally Bosnia, because they are the only ally you can get worth getting. Ragusa, Albania? Useless. Wallachia won’t. Hungary wants your land. Poland and Lithuania are so tantalizingly close, but just out of reach. Changes to the diplomacy model make it really punitive to small nations. The army and navy size maluses to forming alliances, the religious differences, and the fact they almost immediately max diplomatic relations giving the over limit malus mean that even with the ‘threatened by Ottomans’ boost, with maxing improve relations, and every other trick possible, they are perpetually about 5-10 short on the ‘reasons to accept’ scale. Byzantium will just get you hosed when the Ottomans come calling. While it seems that keeping them alive would help, I just can’t get it done.
But I reliably could get into the Greek lands. Venice wants Zeta, and usually will declare on you. So if you, on day 1, start a galley, then start a second as soon as you can, build some more cavalry, and diplo develop your gold mine 2-3 levels, then they are beatable. Bosnia as ally really helps. In my dozen starts I was reliably able to get 3 provinces from Venice in the first decade. My best run had me getting their Albanian province, Naxos, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Euboria. More than doubling development in a 25 year span. At that point you’re just about strong enough that Poland or Lithuania will take you as an ally. Sailor gain is about 11 a month at that point as well. It feels good!
Then the Ottomans want Euboria, or Hungary comes calling, and Poland proves inept as an ally. Or it has taken so many points of military power for generals and war taxes that, simply put, they are that one critical tech level ahead. 4,5, and 6 are such critical tech levels for their bonuses, as well as new unit types, that being behind a level, or two, just means that war is futile. It’s the conundrum. You need to expand fast, because you are on a timer. Get strong enough to get an ally, or the Ottomans come. Get strong enough to have enough manpower and naval power, to hope to be able to kite and strike detached forces. You’re the underdog, so fighting smarter is essential. But the problem is that the wars you need to get stronger drain manpower. You’re punching above your weight. They cost military points, since invariably mercenaries are needed, and war taxes take 50 at a crack. Advisors cost too much to afford any, and your king and heirs are crap, so point gains are painfully slow, and keeping up difficult at best. Try to focus on saving points for tech, and you can’t get strong enough. Get strong enough, and you fall behind on tech making your strength not that strong.
And you need a damn good general. If you recruit a general with 4 pips, might as well restart the campaign. I actually probably started twice as many campaigns that never left November as I did that I tried, simply because if the first general roll is bad enough, you’re done. You just boosted the Noble estate by using their the commision general action, at a severe future cost of potential rebellion (they go to 85% influence after), so unless the general has 6 pips in non maneuver stats, no point going on. And even if you do everything right, but can’t get a strong ally (good luck, it’s out of your control), then at some point the Ottomans come calling, and the 15 units you have, plus whatever Bosnia has, just isn’t enough. If you allied the Byzantines and hoped to keep them alive? Fat chance. They seem incapable of getting useful allies. And Byzantium and Serbia vs the Ottomans seems just this side of possible, enough to be tempting, but its a trap. Every time I tried, thinking this time I could stop them at Edirine, or in the Balkans, it failed. I’ve got good generals, bait them to attack me in the mountains, ambush small forces sieging, take out their fleets, get so tantalizingly close to being able to stem the tide… but they have the sailors to immediately rebuild. You can’t be everywhere, and eventually the main force will land. The Byzantines wont sally out of Constantinople with their navy when you engage the main Ottoman fleet with your full force limit galley navy in the straits of Marmara, the ally AI won’t go to the target you set, it just doesn’t quite work. If I could control the Byzantine armies, make them meet up with me, it feels almost there…
But it isn’t. But don’t ally them? Ottomans take their lands and get much stronger. There is no win there. At some point you need just the right luck. The magic combo of getting strong enough by outsmarting the Venetians (reliably possible) for Naxos and Crete, peeling off the eastern Med islands of Rhodes and Cyprus (depends on if the Mamlukes guaruntee them), have one nearby great/ nearly great power deign to ally you, and hope the Ottomans get into a fight in the east with a strong power like Quara Qonylu, Timurids, or the Mamelukes. This is where it fails me, invariably they never seem to do it. Not before they take the Balkans, even if they have their eastern Anatolia mission.
It’s challenging, but just slightly more frustrating then fun because of the diplo changes making alliances as Serbia impossible. A slight tweak of the numbers and it would all click I think. Being able to get useful alliances is all I need, but Serbia just can’t right now.
So I swithed to doing Big Blue Blob. Also hard, due to speed and aggressiveness, but it is a fun challenge. My problems are the admin power to core, the managing AE, and being able to get at those sweet sweet low development provinces in the far north, or far south of Europe. A decade in and I’ve got a nice start, but am behind the curve. But I’m working on getting into Naples and Norway. Vassalize East Frisia to get a jumping point to expand my reach. Ally Scotland to stage for the Orkneys. Then justify a war. Austria is fighting a Burgundy who attacked Liege, is now the time to strike their ally Aragon?
It’s a puzzle. France is strong. Not invincible, but certainly strong, and with good generals. Could I take Aragon and Austria? Yeah, I think I could. It’s a puzzle with a solution, one within my control. If I fail, it is because I screwed up.
Hopefully the next patch tweaks diplomatic numbers just enough, because Serbia seems such an interesting problem if I can get an ally.
I have been watching this guy, somewhat randomly as i’m not playing EU4 and haven’t for some time, own as Byzantium. I’m not going even bother describing all the steps but there are a ton, but he games the game so well Byzantium will win a war with 4-5 provinces in a couple of years after starting.
Also, i don’t at all support the meme behind this video, nor really the rest of it at all, but the first minute of “Ulm-time” really is the kind of nerd male fantasy thing that made me lol.
The one thing that I really like with the States is that it did away with the clumsy Overseas penalty for provinces. No more playing games trying to get your capital moved to a particular landmass so just that everything you grabbed there wouldn’t get the -75% Overseas penalty. Now it’s directly in the player’s control: you choose what areas you want to make States and what to leave as Territories, rather than the game forcing it on you based on the location of the capital. It did away with all the edge cases (and their attempted fixes for them) that would allow countries like Portugal from moving their capital to the New World.
I did want to swing back here with an update, as I did complete my Portugal run.
My weird goal, if you remember, was to basically take over as Africa. When I last posted I had conquered Western and Central Africa, and colonized South Africa. My goal was to have a lane into Tunis/Ottomans from North Africa, Central Africa and Eastern Africa.
I very quickly conquered Eastern Africa - taking out all the nations there and pushing my borders to the Red Sea. At this point my armies were in decent shape, but I wasn’t quite at where I wanted to be for war with Tunis and the Ottomans (the Ottomans at this point were massive, and had the whoel Arabian peninsula except Hormuz, as well as all the Mamluk’s territory). I had Spain and France as allies, but they had been notoriously useless to me in this run. But anyway, I saw an opportunity to launch an attack on Tunis while they and the Ottoman’s were heavily engaged in a war with Russia (the 3rd biggest power in this game).
I sent about 200k troops split between the three fronts (Tlemcen territories, Central Africa and Eastern Africa) up into battle! I thought maybe I could conquer North Africa and consolidate my forces in Egypt. I made almost no gains before a a bunch of massive stacks from the Ottomans came marching down, and promptly smashed my divided forces (something something dividing your forces)… and I was quickly put on the run. I peaced out as quickly as I could, losing a few African provinces, so that I could lick my wounds. I was trying to figure out how Ottomans weren’t getting pounded by Russian since it was clear their main army was down trouncing me.
I decided to change my strategy. I built a few strategically located forts in Eastern Africa, recovered my manpower, and built up to my force limit. This time I consolidated all my regiments in my North African territories, prepared to slam into Tunis. I did keep one small stack in East Africa to try and lure the Ottomans down that path. I declare war, and there is one mountain fort blocking my path to the east, but I figure it will fall quickly… but it doesn’t. I’m not sure how many years it took to fall, while my armies remained plugged up, but it did take years. Good fort, good terrain combined with some really unlucky dice rolls made me pay. Meanwhile, the Otto’s take my bait and start sieging my forts in East Africa. They won’t last long, but I pray they will last long enough.
Finally, the fort falls and my forces stream into into Tunis. Even the Spanish have joined me with one of their mediocre stacks. The Mediterranean sea falls under our control quickly, with my naval power combined with my colonial fleets and spanish fleets wreaking havoc. But, still, I wait for the decisive battles with the Otto’s to happen… but the only thing that materializes from them in North Africa is two medium stacks that I am able to rout with my focused forces. Instead, the Ott’s have finished off my forts in East Africa and are streaming into Central Africa - splitting their stacks into 1k and 2k forces to most efficiently conquer my provinces. Hell, they even start hitting West Africa… but these provinces are mostly all worthless, so I ignore it and continue to push through North Africa and into Egypt. Finally, I split off about 100k troops from the force that has begun rampaging through the Otto’s territory and they start stamping out the Ottoman’s straggling forces in Africa.
Peace comes quickly here, as I take 1/2 of Tunis’s territory.
I’m anticipating one more big war, but while the truce is ticking I launch a quick war to consolidate a few remaining provinces in Eastern Africa (a hotbed of rebellion for the rest of my game) and take a chunk out of Kilwa.
After the truce expires, I declare war on Tunis again, preparing for a knock down fight… but it never comes. The feared green armies never materialize, and my forces take the rest of Tunis and conquer huge swaths of Ottoman territory, including their capital. I have no idea where their forces were, but what I can only assume is that the French made an appearance in their eastern european lands. This war ends with me taking the remaining Tuni’s provinces (except Malta) and a few Ottoman lands in Egypt.
Thus begins the final stage of my game, the slog of endless wars with the Ottomans. I think I had 4 more wars with them by the time the game ended. Most of them were knock down fights, but I eventually take most of the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, and other chunks in the Middle East. They are never really toppled, as they make up for their losses in Hungary, Persia, and Russia. I also take the rest of Kilwa and the nation in south-central Africa (Kamembe maybe?). My trade is producing so much income that I don’t even really have problems with revolutionaries in Louisiana, Mexico, Caribbean, Columbia, Brazil and Australia - as i keep tariff’s near zero.
Fun game, but the tedium of colonizing and conquering Africa wore on me by the end.
Last night I did start a Brandenburg run to participate in Europe again, and it was an absolute perfect start. Poland didn’t rival me. Pomerania didn’t get any strong allies. I normally ally Saxony, Mecklenburg, and Brunswick to start… but wasn’t paying attention and I had rivaled Anhalt, who Brunswick had allied, so they pulled out of my alliance. Anyway, I immediately started a war with Pomeriania and made them my vassal. I was getting ready to hit the Teutonic Order next while they were weak, but Poland got to them first and annexed the entire nation, which was frustrating… so instead I went to war with Brunswick and vassalized them. Was able to ally with Austira and I’ve begun the diplo-annex of Pomerania. Need to gain some power to push Poland who is hedging me from expanding into Eastern Europe (don’t want to over-commit to central europe and get coalitioned to death).
Nice having a game where I don’t have to think about colonies, navy, or trade - just focus on diplomacy and brute land force.
That’s awesome, thanks for the writeup! Europe will now tremble before your space marines! And yeah, I hate when Poland snatches up all of the Teutonic Order before I can get to them!