This is the game that keeps on giving. I have jumped back into this again recently after a fairly long absence, and it’s still as addictive and fun as ever. Playing the game puts me into something like a trance, where I am so focused on continually governing my country that I cease to observe the passage of time (I mean real time not EU4 time (which I observe like a hawk)). When I am playing most other games I will generally know when I am half an hour into a session, or an hour, or two at the most. But this one is like playing a dream. I suppose this is the spirit behind the ‘quarter to three’ effect, except at more sensible times of the day.
Anyway, is it just me or has the game become tougher? I tried to unite Italy a couple of times and found my old timetables and tricks to do doing this weren’t as effect anymore. I would get coalition’d and slapped down when I played too aggressively too quickly. Somehow it doesn’t feel like expansion has been nerfed, or anything like that, perhaps just that the AI is less exploitable now. It does make the game better.
Some of the changes to the last time I played have been great. I really like the new mission system, to me it takes the best aspects of the HOI IV focus trees but turns them into a set of player goals. Some may think this brings about a bit more railroading of what you must do to progress, but the benefits of filling the missions are mild enough I don’t think ignoring them will really punish a player.
And the next expansion looks great, too! The changes to the government system look tops. When it comes out I might pick up cradle of civilization too, for the army drilling and professionalism mechanic which looks rad.
Yeah that’s right, the estate and policy changes look great as well. The extra flavour for India is just the cherry on top to all of the mechanical changes, in my view.
This is the kind of expansion to EU4 that I like most at this stage, ones that rework and expand existing mechanics as opposed to introduce completely new ones with an extra currency to worry about. While that was a big boon earlier in the post-release development cycle, now it just adds to bloat.
For instance, I would find the game just as fun (if not slightly more so) if the power projection mechanic was removed. The ‘Age of X’ addition with the currency splendour is ok and adds a bit of flavour, but again I would feel no real loss if it was removed. Absolutism is another example.
Meanwhile, since release many great new features have been added and almost all of the core mechanics have been significantly improved and fleshed out, to the game’s great benefit. I had a look at a video of EU4 1.0 and it was surprising just how bare it seems now looking back (of course back at release it didn’t feel bare). The game has changed so gradually yet so thoroughly it’s hard to recognise.
Thankfully they put in the effort to maintain the capability, despite it being less convenient. I think most developers would have just shrugged and deprecated the feature for older builds.
Those AI changes sound very good. I’m surprised they haven’t worked the espionage system into the all-knowing ledger though. It would be great if the player (and AI) had only incomplete knowledge of rivals and possible targets unless resources were spent towards intelligence gathering. If feels like cheating to know that Spain has 12 heavies and 1,000 manpower. If I had to earn that knowledge it would be amazing.
I see what you’re thinking, and it is intriguing on a base level. If I’m bordering the Turks, and see their manpower is only 1000 men and they’re at war? Yeah, that might alter my strategic decision making. Attack now, instead of next year maybe.
But on the other it introduces micromanagement overhead, and probably taxes a resource that is already limiting, especially early game, the number of Diplomats. Plus, for many things, an experienced player has a good proxy already, you may not know how many men Muscovy has exactly, but you probably have a good ballpark.
And the idea of being able to manipulate the perception of your army size, either higher or lower, perhaps feeding false location reports, could be an interesting espionage action, it would likely feel either useless or abusive against the AI.
I could see it workingif, perhaps, it was linked to any diplomatic actions. Improve relations? You get a more accurate picture of their strength. Same fabricate claims. But still I think it would negatively impact the strategic gameplay more than it would help.
Oh I use it. Not all the time, and I do t bother with things like using the balance sheet to determine how many loans a country has, but I certainly monitor rivals and threats for their manpower and naval power and composition.
That Turk example wasn’t a hypothetical, it’s something I’ve done. I saw they were at war with Muscovy and low manpower. I knew the battle was coming at some point, so I went ahead and advanced timetables. Doing so I prevented them from recovering and consolidating. Periodically monitoring the manpower of potential threats and conquests is huge.
‘England is allied with Poland. The English have 25k troops, the polish 55k. I’ve got 45k. If I attack England, then the Poles have to cross Germany. So if I take 30k troops across the channel, and leave 15 in reserve, my forts should buy me the time I need if they come full stack. I’ll send my 15k home force to Calais, and can send to England if Poland never materializes’
Absolutely the kind of strategic thinking I use. It doesn’t decide things, but it does certainly help decide when to do things. Often I’ll set a target point. ‘Attack when their manpower reserves drop below 10k’ or some such.
One thing to note, manpower particularly, is that units at partial strength do not decrease in effectiveness in a linear scale. That is to say 10 units with 100 men are not equally effective to 1 unit with 1000. There is some exponential growth curve there. So if you catch an enemy at low manpower, the losses they suffer are more damaging. They won’t be able to full reinforce for a while. So the first battle you do damage, and you get to reenforce but they can’t? Then you hit them again. And again. And eventually stack wipe them. Much easier when they don’t have the manpower to absorb 1,2,4K losses and you do.
Some ideas : use a diplomat for a mission that takes a year or two (less for rivals) plus cash per month = ledger knowledge for 20 years (or until their ruler dies?)
the espionage idea group would be great for this - add an idea that allows the country to sell ledger data (like selling world maps or tech)
sharing a border; having adjacent forts would lessen the time/costs of spying
merchants in proximity
Now if the AI is using the ledger data to make decisions this would be problematic but I think it would be an interesting mechanic rather than knowing all the things.
Even in lieu of monitoring manpower, another indicator is to monitor how a war is going between two factions, because that information too is relayed to the player. Turks vs Rus, if the diplomacy view for one side shows a -20, I know they are losing pretty badly.
The manpower thing isn’t always reliable anyway. After all, with the inclusion of estates, a nation can levy the feudal lords and get another 10k manpower for instance. It does scale if I recall. Or conscript the populace at the cost of army professionalism that was introduced with one of the recent DLC.
Thankfully, it looks like they’re also revisiting the Maghreb. I always want to play Morocco, but I tend to find it a pretty miserable experience. You start out with a terrible king, your neighbors all have Hostile Core Creation which makes expansion across North Africa extremely expensive for pretty crappy land, and the Iberians have naval dominance. On top of that, I find their Ideas to be the worst in the entire time. I did play a game recently as Morocco (where I remembered why I disliked it so much) and had success, but definitely wasn’t the most fun.
I think the changes they outlined are going to help a lot. Removal of HCC is going to make eating your neighbors a better proposition for early-game expansion. You have some determination on when you get land access access to Western Africa via the mission tree. And while their reworked Ideas still aren’t great, the ones for Andalusia are an amazing payoff if you can reverse the reconquista. In my recent Morocco game it was a bit of a letdown to drive Portugal and Spain from the peninsula only to get a tag change. I’m looking forward to replaying that game once the immersion pack goes live.
EDIT: Oh and I have to say, the new Spanish ideas announced today sound top-tier. The new modifier they are adding for them (the bonus to Artillery) sounds like it is going to be lethal in the mid parts of the game, getting less amazing as technology progresses. I think that’s a good fit for the Spanish Empire!
I’m going to steal a little of @KevinC thunder here and post the latest dev diary which is all about Pirates! No, not the Sid Meier game, but rather a chance to actually play as a Pirate Republic in the game.
This for some reason has me quite a bit excited. When I played through the game as Netherlands, it was kinda fun playing tall, and given that Pirate Republic too are required to play tall in order to form, it might be a nice shift in the game similar to what I found with Netherlands.
Haha, no stealing of thunder! Paradox games tend to be some of my favorite so I keep up on the dev diaries, but I sometimes feel a little self-conscious about bumping all the threads with the latest. I worry I come across as a spammer. :)
The pirate thing sounds fun. I think there’s room in the game for more “roleplay” type of scenarios, and playing a pirate republic that possibly evolves into something greater as the game goes on sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
Of course, I"m sure the forums will be full of complaints about how you can’t paint the map as a pirate republic and that they need to be “fixed” because they “suck”. :)
