Thanks for sharing - tempting to dip back into this after reading that!
I think you’re clearly aimed at a casual play so you shouldn’t worry about guides. I’m not saying it as a condemning way - these games are role-playing games in a way, they work because you bring a lot of assumptions here, and there’s no you win/you lose screen as long as you survive.
In fact, I think countries are Byzantium are popular because optimal and roleplay approaches are united there. It’s a country one step from complete destruction, and its chances are slim, so it makes total sense it will use some obscure mechanics and do the unthinkable if it’s supposed to survive. Venice doing something uncharacteristic is much less believable because it doesn’t have to, it survived for centuries and was a major power at the time, it should be doing its own thing.
And thanks for sharing! I can’t remember properly using mercenaries. In the early game you never have enough money as in most countries for anything apart from that cheap Free Company. And in a late game you want Army Professionalism, so I only rarely used them to patch the defense on some remote theater of war.
I’m in the midst of Byzantium run (my first, believe it or not) and it has been a joy. I had to restart 3 times to figure out the right strategy for isolating the Ottomans in the first war.
What has made it fun is that even as I got a strong foothold, the rest of the world went nuts without the Otto’s to contain the early game. The Mamaluks defeated me in a war driving me back towards straits, the Commonwealth formed early and blobbed, blocking Russia from forming (a key ally for me). France blobbed as it usually does in 1.34… and Spain is absolutely massive and controls southern Italy - a region I need for my mission tree! Austria is weak because they didn’t PU Hungary, and Austria lost the emperorship.
Just a fun map that is going to be a constant struggle against the big guns. Really enjoying the playthrough after my last two games were stupid-easy Austria HRE vassal swarm and France.
How big is the Byzantine mission tree? I don’t think I’ve played them since that became a thing.
Byzantium is definitely on my shortlist. I’m sure there’ll be restarts.
This is definitely true for me, anyway. I want to feel like I’m taking part in a plausible alternate history, and tend to lose motivation once map-painting starts to take over.
it is medium-large. Not as interesting as some - so far almost all the missions are the same in that they grant permanent claims throughout the mediterranean sea. It is nice to get those, for sure - but I like more of the things you see in France, or stuff that gives permanent modifiers to your country that make it interesting and unique. Maybe those come later.
It gives quite a lot actually. If you follow to the end, it basically gives you claims, ultimately, on the whole of the Roman Empire at its heights, lots of dev in Constantinople proper, and some permanent military boosts. You can even switch to Roman Empire later and get more bonkers military boosts.
As mission trees go, it’s not Mughals, but it’s one of the best.
I think with the recent AI changes late game is still a joy even for a RP play. Sure you won’t get special events and missions for a highly specific world situation you find yourself in, but the stories right themselves when political blocks form, new countries and colonies emerge, hegemonies and wonders transform the map.
A lot of people like Anbennar mod for its extensive mission trees but for me their clash with this emergent gameplay. They’re great in the beginning but by the midgame you always have some cool unique situation with interesting opportunities but the missions lead you to very specific actions.
I do see an interesting conflict in the community around what they want from EU4. Some folks like things to follow the historical tracks very closely, while others are in it for alternate history and how the world can be made wildly different.
I’m in the latter, and support any changes that mix things up. I always use random lucky nations, for example. It’s also why the random new world has been so disappointing and the new 1.34 mission trees have been so satisfying.
For me, mission trees are one of the biggest sources of flavor for different nations. Without them most runs of EU4 would feel very much the same at this point. But like you said, I think they generally work better in the early game than in the mid-to-late game. There are plenty of late game missions with pretty broad objectives, which is probably the right way to go with those to avoid railroading a whole playthrough. But regardless, most late game missions don’t have terribly helpful rewards for the stage of the game you’ll accomplish them.
Anbennar is kind of all over the place with content based on nation/region you’re playing in. That mod has areas with a ton of unique mechanics and impactful events that work completely separate from the mission trees. But there are also areas that play like a pretty standard EU4 game that rely a lot on the mission trees to provide the flavor.
I still like the EU4 mission trees way better than the old decision-based systems, the Imperator mission trees, and pretty much any of the journal entries I’ve experienced in Vicky 3. I still have hope that the last one ends up with more interesting content that ends up being more interesting than EU4 mission trees.
I’m more on the alternate history side myself, but I prefer when it’s somewhat plausible. Or if something truly absurd happens, have it be a rare thing where all the stars happened to align. Weirder things have happened in history.
As a player, I enjoy being given a set of historical circumstances and then having the freedom to go from there. I really dislike when a game makes me feel like I’m on rails and restricted to what happened historically.
And the nice thing about missions is that they are all optional and don’t actually restrict you! Now, I do wish the chains weren’t quite so rigid, sometimes an early mission in a chain has some very rigid requirements that lock you out of a bunch of other missions you’d otherwise hit easily. Regardless, it’s way better than the event driven railroading of earlier games while still providing some guidance towards some historical outcomes.
I think what I’d like to see would be an always available set of core missions for a country that maybe take you into the mid-game and maybe one or two broad objectives for later game. But supplement that with more dynamic mission sets that are based on current circumstances and can be more adaptive to what you’re doing. You’re colonizing as a non-historic colonizer? Great, here’s some missions you can do related to that! This more dynamic mission set is kind of what the mission trees in Imperator were supposed to do but just never found the right balance on.
Totally agree. It would irk me in EU3 when a historical event would fire even if it didn’t make any sense in the context of the current game and how things had diverged from history.
The good news is that the 1.34 patch and DLC is likely the new devs experimenting with things they want to do with EU5. Rumor is that the next DLC will be the last (focusing on the Middle East) - and then the studio is off to EU5 with everything they’ve learned. Hopefully that means robust and branching mission trees.
I like dynamic mission trees from Imperator the most… on paper. I like how the events interact with character system, other places, you get flavourful approaches to problems. Feels like more than sum of its parts. But there should be many more of them. Something for being a loyal vassal or planning a rebellion (such mission tree is already in the game but for specific countries like Athens only), something recognizing huge expanding threat (look for allies when Rome comes), tending to your vassals, preparing to build a wonder etc . And there should be more local flavor variants, like different cultures having a different idea of a prosperous city, or different diplomatic approaches to starting a war in a specific region.
As it is it’s pretty limited, but I imagine how cool would it be if something similar was in EU4 providing flavor for a midgame. By necessity all the late game mission stuff is conquer this or that, cause it’s pointless to make more dynamic missions like befriend this or develop London.
Imperator Invictus has added a bunch more mission trees, but most of them are country or region specific, so don’t expand on the overall general possibilities. The lack of variety for the Imperator trees was a big issue, for sure. My other problem was that the scope always felt off. It often took a very long time to get through a whole tree, but they always felt like they were meant to be more immediate objectives. I’d like for a lot of the trees to have been split into two so that you could get the first one completed, shift strategic focus for awhile, and then come back to do the later missions in part 2 of the tree.
Probably doesn’t matter since Imperator is long dead, but I do hope that doesn’t mean Paradox is ignoring it when it comes to evaluating features they’ve done in the past. Imperator has a ton of good ideas!
I’ve experienced some of this in my Venice game. One of Venice’s early missions is to capture 50% of the Genoa trade node value, which basically means taking on Genoa (or, I suppose, conquering the rest of Italy). But Genoa had allied with France fairly early, so here was Venice with its 35 regiment force limit and 22k manpower hoping to somehow beat France?
Which was frustrating for a while, because some juicy missions depended on completing this one. But it also, ultimately, was a spur to re-thinking and taking on a challenge that I otherwise would have walked away from. So it turned out to have real game value in my circumstances.
Honestly I do like situations like that. Forces full engagement with the systems.
Hmm Genoa is allied to France, so I can’t take Genoa. But if I declare on Ferrara they will bring in Genoa, which I can use to force them to break alliance with France, and then in 10 years declare war and take Genoa then.
Figuring out how to manipulate alliances and guarantees to divide and conquer is a puzzle I always enjoy.
Or in my case, it came down to.
-
Hiring more mercenaries than I ever have in any previous EU4 game. And compensating for my poor military tradition by hiring the expensive companies with good leaders rather than trying to find those that were best value for their maintenance cost.
-
Allying with France’s rivals in the hopes that they’d want to fight France. OK, tooltip says that Austria won’t fight France because of their big piles of debt. Well I have lots of money, I can fix that!
And ultimately, successfully completing that mission and taking Genoa scratched my historical role-playing itch. Venice doesn’t grow in power by gobbling up so much land that it dominates Europe. It grows in power by controlling trade and using the value of that trade to manipulate European politics. Venetians don’t go out and fight for their King and Country - that’s what mercs are for.
All good examples of why I find the diplomatic space so much more interesting than other strategy games, especially the 4X variety where there’s usually only 1-8 players.