This is indeed a great run. There are so many interesting starts in EU4.
The downside of Novgorod → Russia is that a Republican Russia is so alien to historical experience it becomes difficult to roleplay in your mind as you play it.
I understand what you mean. But history is not about paths set in stone! I’ve heard some strong arguments for the idea that Russia is actually predisposed to be a democracy, much more than most of the world. From practical point of view, it’s too big and diverse to ever be effectively controlled by a centralized government.
And historically there’s plenty of evidence for democratic predisposition. Both Russian big dynasties (Rurikids and Romanovs) were invited, elected by the community. Novgorod is a republic you know about (and by the way it’s remarkable in some ways; in practice it was an oligarchy, of course, but they still had a popular vote in some forms), but before the Mongol invasion basically all Rus lands (including modern Belarus and Ukraine) didn’t have an overlord, even nominal ones. Kiev was just a biggest and most desired duchy and many times rulers had just abandoned their old titles in favor of getting there. See the story of Vseslav the Sorceror who wasn’t even Rurikid and became ruler of Kiev because people didn’t like the previous duke and decided Vseslav would do a better job.
Even after Mongol invasion, you had Cossacks living in some sort of democracy, part of old Rus lands easily integrating into a less authoritarian Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ivan the Terrible has built a reign of terror as authoritative as he could - but his regime didn’t outlive him and you needed another century and genius ruler Peter the Great to make monarch a real ruler again. This line of thought concludes that authoritarian regime is actually something very alien to Russia and this is why it’s always very ugly and inhumane.
So you may look at it as an alternative take on history. Even if the idea is wrong it has some arguments going for it! Sorry for the off-topic.
My plan right now is to start easy with Austria, then Papal States, then Bohemia. Unless I get bored of playing in roughly the same area for three games in a row and throw a different country in there.
PSA: 5 hours till launch.
I thought i was done with EU4 (haven’t played in a couple years at least) but I’m starting to get tempted to spin it up again. Saw a YouTube video with new countries (something like 25 if including releasable ones.) Does anyone know if that’s a patch feature or do you need the xpac to get them?
Every country is always playable (apart from colonial nations, but there are none in 1444 start). Some of the features may be missing. Latest expansion added features for HRE and Catholics as well as additional content for a lot of European countries. Like new events, missions and so on. Without expansions most countries in Europe still have a lot of flavour and special mechanics.
Thanks - and I should know that. :)
(I have a lot of the DLC but nothing recent. Don’t know if I’ll be getting this one either as I don’t normally do anything with the HRE aside from leaving it, but I’ll need to read up more on it.)
Looks like it is out now. I’m going to try to stay away while I finish up a couple others games because I know once I figure up EU4 I’ll get sucked back in for weeks. Oh well, with an update this large I’m assuming it will need a hotfix or two to stabilize anyway. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. :)
Since I last played I bought a 4K monitor and now the menus are super tiny.
Do you guys in the same boat just play at a different resolution or is there something I’m missing that enlarges the menus a bit?
Pretty sure they added a UI scale setting. All their other modern games have it so I might be getting it confused with one of those, though.
EDIT: From a post I found from earlier this year:
If none of that does the trick I’d drop the resolution, although it means you’d have to play in fullscreen mode instead of borderless.
Thanks!
Sure thing! Please report back if any of that helps. One of my displays is 4K so it’s something I’m likely to be tinkering with myself before too long.
Well I’ll be waiting a bit to check out the new version. Have a Japan game I am pushing a few achievements on. Want to wrap that first.
Also just intentionally triggered Court and Country while fighting half of China, France, and the central steppes. Want to hit the 100 absolutism achievement. Need Court and Country to get from 95 to 100, god I hated that. Intentional no CB war, high overextension, and everything to trigger it? Ouch! With Humanist I really had to go to stupid lengths to keep unrest high enough.
But as soon as I get that, the Krishitan Japan (just flipped formally, and am converting Japan aggressively) I’m looking forward to trying it.
Debating something in Italy, or maybe finally doing a Muscovy or England run. Never played either, and haven’t done Europe in a while. Maybe a Danelaw run?
The gui_scale in settings.txt does the trick. Didn’t have to play around with that value but setting it to 2 made it a little too big, I think I’ll try 1.5 but regardless that works (setting the properties in the executable didn’t make any appreciable changes.)
Thanks again. :)
Yeah, in the same boat. Currently playing other games, but know if I fire this up, it will be a month before I …er…sleep.
In the latest update they added the scaling setting in the options menu under video, so you don’t need to fiddle with the txt file. They seem to have fixed the placement of tooltips, previously the scaling setting mucked things up. People on the forum are disappointed that they didn’t also improve the sharpness of the UI on 4k. Don’t expect anything clearer than 1080p rez (for the UI, the map looks great in 4k).
I also find that 1.7 is much better than 1.5 on my 4k screen, the font doesn’t look squashed as it does on 1.5.
The sharpness is still much better than it was before with experimental scaling. But I know what I mean, they don’t render fonts in higher resolution like imperator.
I was curious about how the map changes would effect the 100 Years War and can say it’s never felt more winnable than it does now as England. I got the easy mode start where both Burgundy and Aragon began rivaled to France though. And then I got the Burgundian Inheritance right after I dismantled France with them, which saved a crazy amount of coring costs. Pretty much as lucky as I could possibly be right now, waiting for something terrible to happen.
And… yep, it’s buggy. I’m not linking because the whining is over the top, but a couple of things stand out:
- Too easy to get HRE points for reforms, 10 points per country joining and them really wanting to join means the AI unites around 1600 (and players sooner). Italian countries leaving via the Shadow Kingdom rejoin anyway.
- The AI is too keen on getting many loans to hire mercs and win a war
- Noticeably slower
- Various balance issues, in case you’re new to this and think playing MP or ironman in a big new patch isn’t going to be a unique experience.
In happier news (ỸMMV), from the release stream (I think)
Johan: “'I will be the one that makes all EU games in the future, and I’m not gonna tell the vision, but we’re gonna make more expansions for EU4, it’s gonna be awesome.”
Groogy: “I have a lot of ideas.”
I’ve been having a lot of fun with my first game with the expansion. I really like the reworked mercenary and estate system. Since I’m playing as Austria, I don’t have much to say about the new naval system. I’ve also never really interacted much with the HRE systems in the past(other than to try to tear them down) so this game is the first one I’ve really tried to build a strong HRE.
It’s been an up and down game. I was able to force both Bohemia and Hungary into a personal union early and ended up inheriting them both.
However, the Reformation was less kind to me. I tried to stay Catholic but the Protestants got Poland, Lithuania, and the Ottomans on their side for the league war and I got absolutely crushed. I thought about reverting to just trying to tear down the HRE, but looked at all the Austrian missions that require being emperor and decided to just take the hit and convert myself. Once I was back in the cool religion club I got stuck waiting for the current emperor to die before I could retake my throne. Fucker got elected in his 20s and survived well into his 70s. Not only that, he did nothing to advance the empire in those 50 years.
Now that I’ve retaken my rightful place as emperor, I’ve spent most of the last 75 years fighting war after war to enforce religious unity within the empire and to retake our lands from foreigners. At this point it’s the late 1600s and I’m well set up to start working quickly down the Centralization branch of the HRE reforms. I’ve successfully taken most privileges away from the estates now that absolutism in play, and as a fun bonus, I have Great Britain in a personal union. Feels like the game is going to get less interesting from here, but I still want to fully unite the empire before I start a new one.