Europa Universalis IV

Furry · Nov 20, 2022

20 years since the last screenshot. Europe is crumbling under my onslaught, and Germany is now formed. Castile/france and the ottomans can still field a larger army than me. Great britain's capital is now in detroit, and they are free to sail their navy on all of Lake Huron. I'm very aggressively fighting in the new world, too. I really need to flood my northeast flank with some castles.

This game is close to a wrap, and will probably finish tomorrow. Just need to storm poland and then Russia, and finally break the ottomans and then castile. I'll probably get the expansion after this. Might try a world conquest as the teutonic order or sweden to giv their new mission trees a spin, or play as a random civ so I get my dick kicked in as some random opm.

Bubbles · Nov 20, 2022

I realized I'm just too stupid to play any Paradox games. I have spent way over 200 euros on CK2 alone and have played it like 8 hours. Now I'm starting to think about buying EU4 on winter sale. I watched a bunch of tutorials a few years back but had a stronger resolve to abstain from buying but now I'm getting weaker. I like the nation aspect more than having to focus on relationships

Araysar · Nov 20, 2022

Bubbles said:
I realized I'm just too stupid to play any Paradox games. I have spent way over 200 euros on CK2 alone and have played it like 8 hours. Now I'm starting to think about buying EU4 on winter sale. I watched a bunch of tutorials a few years back but had a stronger resolve to abstain from buying but now I'm getting weaker. I like the nation aspect more than having to focus on relationships

I dont like the CK games and I own the 2nd and the 3rd one.

But I love EU 4, Stellaris, Imperator Rome, Hearts of Iron

Aaron · Nov 20, 2022

Paradox games are some of the most enjoyable to watch (at least if it is a competent player) on Twitch or YT. I have countless hours watching them, but whenever I try and play them I end up getting roflstomped.

Furry · Nov 20, 2022

I’ve played a lot more stellaris than eu4, but I’m not a fan of the current iteration of the game. Stellaris is a completely different sort of game really, and it’s a lot harder to recover from a bad war. In EU4, a big part of succeeding is not worrying about a lot of the negative things that happen. I used to worry about negative stability, disasters, and or losing territory in a war or running massively in the red financially. Really, those sort of things are part of the process of the game, and you constantly need to be looking for opportunities of all sorts to push for more even if you cause lots of problems.

I think playing as a small country in a precarious situation does a lot more to teach about the game than picking a big powerful country like the ottomans, but I might be guessing as I’ve never played Castile or the ottomans.

Furry · Nov 21, 2022

Think I'll call it a wrap here. No real threats are left for me after the ottomans got uppity and attacked Russia. Was a lot of effort chasing ottomans all across the vast open lands of Russia while sieging them down at the same time, as Russia was broke as fuck the entire game and had only a few forts, but by the end of the war the Ottos had 0 soldiers and manpower left, and Constantinople had fallen.

Got the newest DLC. I'll probably play a game as the teutonic order. Don't know much other than they got changed. Obviously I need to take a different path than forming prussia. Obvious path is the relentless push east, but I could also consider an early push to invade Ireland and going for colonies. We'll see what the dice makes more reasonable.

Zajeer · Nov 21, 2022

and were enjoyable watches for the TO. Basically you can either go the route of becoming Prussia, or you can instead become a holy order Horde and reverse-Ghengis all of Eurasia in the name of Christ.

I've been wanting to try out the TO horde at some point since it looks fun as hell

Furry · Nov 21, 2022

lol holy order horde sounds fun. I'll have to give that a try.

Aaron · Nov 22, 2022

Furry said:
View attachment 444136

Think I'll call it a wrap here. No real threats are left for me after the ottomans got uppity and attacked Russia. Was a lot of effort chasing ottomans all across the vast open lands of Russia while sieging them down at the same time, as Russia was broke as fuck the entire game and had only a few forts, but by the end of the war the Ottos had 0 soldiers and manpower left, and Constantinople had fallen.

Got the newest DLC. I'll probably play a game as the teutonic order. Don't know much other than they got changed. Obviously I need to take a different path than forming prussia. Obvious path is the relentless push east, but I could also consider an early push to invade Ireland and going for colonies. We'll see what the dice makes more reasonable.

Uncle Adolf would be proud!

Araysar · Nov 22, 2022

Furry said:
View attachment 444136

Think I'll call it a wrap here. No real threats are left for me after the ottomans got uppity and attacked Russia. Was a lot of effort chasing ottomans all across the vast open lands of Russia while sieging them down at the same time, as Russia was broke as fuck the entire game and had only a few forts, but by the end of the war the Ottos had 0 soldiers and manpower left, and Constantinople had fallen.

Got the newest DLC. I'll probably play a game as the teutonic order. Don't know much other than they got changed. Obviously I need to take a different path than forming prussia. Obvious path is the relentless push east, but I could also consider an early push to invade Ireland and going for colonies. We'll see what the dice makes more reasonable.

1770 and you dont control any Russia and havent driven the Ottomans out of Europe. France still exists.

Pathetic.

Furry · Nov 22, 2022

Playing as teutons and poland said fuck you to lithuania. I was like sweet, more land for me. Boy was I wrong, fucking everyone came in for the buffet Muscovy has been so busy kicking lithuania's teeth in that novgorod still has its borders. I mean Gdamn wallachia, take it easy there. Think poland is gonna check out of this game pretty quickly.

Nemesis · Nov 22, 2022

Bubbles said:
I realized I'm just too stupid to play any Paradox games. I have spent way over 200 euros on CK2 alone and have played it like 8 hours. Now I'm starting to think about buying EU4 on winter sale. I watched a bunch of tutorials a few years back but had a stronger resolve to abstain from buying but now I'm getting weaker. I like the nation aspect more than having to focus on relationships

for what it's worth, CK3 and EU4 base games are both free on Gamepass.

Araysar said:
I dont like the CK games and I own the 2nd and the 3rd one.

But I love EU 4, Stellaris, Imperator Rome, Hearts of Iron

I've felt the opposite, preferring CK to EU4, but I think it's because I had already sunk so much time into learning CK2 that I noped out on learning EU4 due to simple oversaturation

Aaron said:
Paradox games are some of the most enjoyable to watch (at least if it is a competent player) on Twitch or YT. I have countless hours watching them, but whenever I try and play them I end up getting roflstomped.

totally agreed. I have minmax OCD, which is exacerbated by the steep learning curve and amount of time required to barely know how to play, which results in me save scum/restarting every time something unrecoverable happens. it's the reason I love to watch but can't play games like CK, EU, Stellaris, RimWorld, Anno, etc.

Deathwing · Nov 24, 2022

What would be the best "map painting" game? I last played EU4 4 years ago, so I bought the subscription and gave it another try. EU4 definitely fulfills that historical fantasy pretty well. There just feels like there is too much getting in the way of blobbing out. This leads to long downtimes of waiting for truces to expire or lots of various resources to recover. Even on the fastest setting, this game can be pretty boring if you aren't at war.

Furry · Nov 25, 2022

Deathwing said:
What would be the best "map painting" game? I last played EU4 4 years ago, so I bought the subscription and gave it another try. EU4 definitely fulfills that historical fantasy pretty well. There just feels like there is too much getting in the way of blobbing out. This leads to long downtimes of waiting for truces to expire or lots of various resources to recover. Even on the fastest setting, this game can be pretty boring if you aren't at war.

I try to always be at war. Some things you can do to help you blob... Individually white peace out countries from a war. White peace has a shorter truce, like only 5 years I think? No CB something you can core or vassalize early on in the game to get a second base, so you can flip from fighting wars in one area and then fighting wars in another area when relations get too hot. No CB wars generate a lot of ire, but are really good in some situations to open up a new front for future conquests.

Fight wars that don't give AE, like humiliation, show strength and what not.

Biggest part of having fun to me is setting a goal/roleplay plan and sticking to it. Achievements can give some good goals, though I don't hunt them that often personally. I don't aim to conquer the world, as that just gets tedious. And when the game becomes tedious and you've met your goal... just stop playing!

Chris · Nov 25, 2022

Furry said:
Biggest part of having fun to me is setting a goal/roleplay plan and sticking to it.

Eliminate Islam via conquest and conversion is a favorite for me. Especially as Byzantium.

Abigailicious · Nov 25, 2022

Araysar said:
I dont like the CK games and I own the 2nd and the 3rd one.

But I love EU 4, Stellaris, Imperator Rome, Hearts of Iron

I had a Fallout mod on HOI 4 that was amazing until some worthless update broke it.

Zajeer · Nov 26, 2022

Deathwing said:
What would be the best "map painting" game? I last played EU4 4 years ago, so I bought the subscription and gave it another try. EU4 definitely fulfills that historical fantasy pretty well. There just feels like there is too much getting in the way of blobbing out. This leads to long downtimes of waiting for truces to expire or lots of various resources to recover. Even on the fastest setting, this game can be pretty boring if you aren't at war.

Are you asking about which country to play? If you want a chill game, but still be a major world power, Spain is pretty good. If you want a powerful army and the ability to war in multiple areas, Ottomans still are one of the best. If you want to World Conquest, Mughals are pretty great (start as Timurids and form them quickly)

I'd recommend watching some streamers on youtube for guides on how to play - Arumba (he rarely plays, but hes still very good at it), The Red Hawk (he puts out a lot of content) and Ludi et Historia (though he sometimes uses cheats) are good.

Burns · Nov 26, 2022

All this talk got me wanting to play though a game again. The metagaming pull is hard to fight, so was going to finally do an ironman run in Asia. I have 100s of hours played, and not a single achievement (not that I care much about them). Also never played in Asia.

I was tempted to try the Teutonic Order, but my last four games were Sweden, Ulster, Novgorod, and Naples, so, a bit tired of Europe.

Looking for some pro tips for Ironman, I checked out that Arumba YouTube that Zajeer recommended. I watched him play a little bit of Korea, and he defiantly knows his stuff. Then searching for something recent, I saw Arumba played some fantasy EU4 mod...and, welp, I guess I'm not playing in Asia after all (or getting any achievements)...

Zajeer · Nov 26, 2022

If you do want try a powerful nation not in Europe, definitely recommend the Timurids -> Mughals start. There's a few recent videos from those streamers I mentioned where they played through as Mughals.

What's so powerful about them, is that they get a unique bonus for controlling all provinces of a given culture and it makes that culture accepted. Its such a snowbally mechanic, and makes them a great candidate for a world conquest because of it. Plus their nation color is a nice forest green, unlike the shitty red/pink Timurids color - always gotta paint the map in style

Araysar · Nov 26, 2022

Zajeer said:
If you do want try a powerful nation not in Europe, definitely recommend the Timurids -> Mughals start. There's a few recent videos from those streamers I mentioned where they played through as Mughals.

What's so powerful about them, is that they get a unique bonus for controlling all provinces of a given culture and it makes that culture accepted. Its such a snowbally mechanic, and makes them a great candidate for a world conquest because of it. Plus their nation color is a nice forest green, unlike the shitty red/pink Timurids color - always gotta paint the map in style

I'm gonna do this. I never played a country outside of Europe.

Just gotta finish my current Stellaris run first

Europa Universalis IV

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