1741

Check the expansion patch notes for the full list of what needs the expansion and what is free, but this is a summary:

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¤ Paid Features from Art of War
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  • It’s now possible to declare a “support rebels”-war against a country that you’re supporting rebels in.
  • It’s now possible to set an allied in war to prioritise sieging a specific province.
  • It’s now possible to set the military focus for your subjects to be Aggressive, Supportive or None, which changes what tactics they will use during war.
  • You can now mothball fleets, which means they will cost less maintainance, but slowly detoriate in the port.
  • You can now designate your vassal into a march They will no longer pay tax to you and you can’t annex them, but they will get bonuses in warfare.
  • It’s now possible to use your subjects CB/Wargoals when declaring a war.
  • Units with names edited by player are now tagged as custom-named, and will take priority when merging.
  • Added Client States mechanics, where you can now create new custom vassals, decide their name, flag & color, and assign them territory as soon as you reach a certain tech level.
  • You can now sell ships to other nations.
  • It is now possible to transfer control of a province to someone you are allied with in a war.
  • Added peace option “Give up claims” that forces the enemy to give up all their claims on you.
  • Added peace option “War Reparations” that forces the enemy to pay a fraction of their income to you each month for 10 years.
  • Added the possibility to upgrade fleets in one click if you can afford it.
  • Garrisons can now sortie from their fortress against a besieging force.
  • Added the option to abandon your foreign cores for a one-time prestige cost.
  • Added abandon idea group functionality, where you can change your countries setup for the future.
  • You can now toggle your fleets to let your allies & subjects load armies on them.
  • The Holy Roman Empire now have a mechanics for internal religious wars, including leagues for Catholics and Protestants that fight over the faith of the Empire.
  • Implemented a new Unit Builder, where you can build entire new armies or fleets in one click.
  • Over 25 flavor events for playing in West Africa.
  • 50 events related to the Thirty Years War.

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¤ Free stuff
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New Features

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  • The map now have 45% more detail, adding over 900 new provinces, with the vast majority of them making sure the rest of the world is as detailed as Europe.
  • Severe optimisations on the game, to have it run basically the same as 17 with all the new provinces and countries added
  • Three new tradegoods added: Silk, Dyes & Tropical Wood
  • Added Support for compressed save games.
  • Rebels no longer revolt in individual provinces. Instead of revolt risk, provinces now have Unrest and each province belongs to a particular rebel faction. When provinces have unrest, that rebel faction will gain progress towards a revolt based on the amount of unrest, and will revolt in one or more consolidated armies upon progress hitting 100%.
  • Accepting rebel demands is now always the same as rebels enforcing their demands.
  • Provinces now have local autonomy. Local autonomy reduces the income, manpower, force limits, and trade power provided by a province, and also lowers the cost of taking that province in a peace dela. Local autonomy is gained on conquest. Local autonomy can now be reduced or increased every 30 years resulting in increased or lowered revolt risk.
  • Overseas provinces now have a minimum autonomy of 75% instead of the ‘distant overseas’ penalty.
  • All colonized provinces now have a minimum autonomy of 50%.
  • The Protestant and Reformed religions now have Centers of Reformation in certain provinces that convert nearby Catholic provinces to their religion. Centers of Reformation are awarded to the country where the religion is founded and the first two other countries to convert to that faith, and replace the old province events that spread those religion. Centers of Reformation are removed if their province is converted to another faith.
  • The College of Cardinals system has been replaced with a system where cardinals are based in provinces and new ones are created once per year in rich Catholic European provinces. Each Cardinal gives some Papal Influence which can either be spent on special ‘Papal Actions’ that grant bonuses and resources to your country, or invested towards becoming the Papal Controller when a new Pope is elected.
  • The Supply and Demand pricing system has been replaced with a system where each resource has a base price that can be modified by various major events, such as the Triangle Trade driving up the price of slaves and the Grand Banks Fisheries lowering the price of fish.
  • The tradenode setup have been severly overhauled, with lots of new tradenodes.
  • Leader assignment has been improved Leaders that are already assigned will show up in the list of available leaders in other units Those leaders can be assigned to those units, which cause them to be removed from their old units
1742

The purpose of their DLC methodology (as opposed to how old boxed expansions typically work) is that everyone is on the same patch level and gets all the bug fixes (not to mention tons of free features). You can even play in multiplayer with all your DLC with someone who just has the base game. For you, you get the the best parts of the new expansion, including the greatly expanded world map, free with the patch.

If you want to get any more specific than that, you can look at the patch notes. Ginger Yellow has the 1.8 notes listed above.

1743

Ah, okay, that makes sense. Thanks!

1744

I’m the same way, I haven’t really able to play HoI3 or EU4 because I start up the game and don’t know where to start. Someday I’ll play one or both…

1745

EU IV would have been a great game for me when I was only buying 4 games a year. It would have forced me to really dig into it and I probably would have greatly appreciated the game. It’s so tough to stay focused on a game like this when there are so many games I want to try.

1746

This is the problem I have. I have a hard time committing to a complex game with a full learning curve, even if I know ultimately that time spent will be rewarded. I just dabble from game to game.

1747

Getting off that ledge is tough, I understand, but once you make that leap… I have 317 hours in EU4 (which is small compared to some people), a massive backlog which received no love during that time, and no regrets whatsoever. What a game.

1748

A good thing from the transition from EU 3 to 4 is that the game is more playable without having a wiki open to determine what triggers there are. For example changing governments required knowing where a bunch of sliders needed to be, it was obtuse and arcane.

The addition of the new disaster system similarly sounds like a good step in the right direction.

1749

I’m the exact same as some of you guys - I’ve tried to play this and CK2 so many times, but just give up after 15 minutes. I always tell myself that when I have 3 days uninterrupted gaming time, I’ll try. I never do.

1750

You guys are overestimating the time investment and learning curve required for the game, IMO! :) It’s not like the old *3 years (EU3, HOI3) where the games were obtuse and inscrutable. Just start the game, select Portugal, and go. The only bit of advice you need is to stay on good terms of Castille/Spain, and the game will provide you with missions to do just that.

The pace of a Portugal game is slow enough that you can learn the interface and figure out what different things do while you’re actually playing the game, no wikis, Let’s Plays, etc required. It gets you involved with trade, colonies, and even warfare if you want to take on the Berbers in North Africa.

1751

And for CK2 you simply start a game on tutorial island, aka Ireland. If you have any questions it’s easy enough to get an answer, but really just play. Most of the important things to deal with are highlighted for you. Just watch the banners along the top of the screen to see what you want to watch for if you need direction.

1752

I certainly wouldn’t drop anyone into the Paradox games (CK or EU) unless they were already familiar with some strategy game concepts. Friends of mine that would I’d consider casual to medium gamers tend to find even EU4 and CK2 inscrutable and give up after an hour to play something else. No matter what you have to be willing to give up a couple of hours at a minimum to learn the bare bones of how Paradox does things.

1753

Same here. But I keep buying all the DLC for EUIV AND CKII all the same. I do love the concept of these games. I may take the advice being offered here though and fire up a game using one of the suggested countries.

1754

I find Paradox’s games uniquely n00b friendly for how every time you play, you’re starting with a fully developed country*. It’s not like a typical strategy game, where you have to build yourself up from humble beginnings, making Important Decisions about what to build next, and having to know in advance how the decisions might play out, otherwise you might drive yourself into a dead end. Instead, in a game like Europa Universalis of Victoria or Crusader Kings, every game is a narrative in progress, with you hopping on board and surfing it forward into time. That’s my metaphor for these games: surfing. You just hang on and ride. As you get better, you can better manipulate what’s going on.

But anyone can jump on and just enjoy the ride, learning as you go. Especially with tooltips like these. Paradox continues to make some of the best docuemented games you can play, which also makes them particularly friendly to new players.

-Tom
  • The exceptions are frightfully dull. I keep trying to play as an American Indian tribe in EU4 in the 15th Century, but dear lord, is it tedious.
1755

I actually like building up from scratch in games like this. It allows me to see the individual moving parts without being overwhelmed with the entire machine at start. That why I loved the addition of a pre warp age to the equally complex Distant Worlds. It helped me gain greater insight into how to handle things.

1756

I agree. I always prefer starting small and as basic as possible. I do decently in games like Civ, but I never play scenarios because I hate starting off with cities. It’s too much of a pain to check them all out to see what’s built and then make a strategy based on where you start off. So much easier to start with 1 city from scratch.

1757

All do in EU games is crush Muscovy. It’s pathological. I’ve still never played a colonial power… not in EU3 or EU2. All i do is play in Eastern Europe and Crush Muscovy. I was just thinking tonight that wouldn’t it be grand to try the Golden Horde and CRUSH MUSCOVY.

1758

Was your family brutalized by Bolsheviks? Tormented by Tsars? Persecuted by (Grand) Princes?

1759

See for me it’s always KILL THE HAPSBURGS. Followed by DESTROY THE FRENCH. I don’t care where I am, by the end of the game I want Austria and France destroyed.

1760

[QUOTE=Tom Chick;3676539]I find Paradox’s games uniquely n00b friendly for how every time you play, you’re starting with a fully developed country*[QUOTE]

I actually think this is a big part of why people I know find the paradox hard to learn. They are used to build things from scratch, as most games operate. The fact that they have to learn how their chosen country currently operates is a big part of the learning curve, once you get past the UI.