Europa Universalis IV Thread 5: Wil Wheaton Turk Party

[russdm]

From Earlier:

Thread 4: Divine Wind (Last posted in on 2/7/2018)

"Europa Universalis 4 is the 4th in a series of Grand Strategy games by Paradox Interactive, set in the years 1444-1821, the Age of Exploration, Enlightenment and Empire Building. You control a nation from the period and seek to guide it to a grand destiny, through trade, conquest, religious strife, colonization and technological ingenuity. You can visit the Paradox Forums for detailed information, and there is a good fan-supported Wiki for more strategy and reference." - OrcusMcP

Currently there are Ten major expansion DLC's with the most current one (Mandate of Heaven) reworking Eastern Asia including China and Japan along with the addition of various ages throughout the game and...other things.

I felt like now was a good time to start a new thread. The previous one kind of died off and it seemed more reasonable to start a new discussion rather than resurrect one from months ago.

Useful links:

Previous thread
Official forums
Fan wiki


Now that all of the formality stuff is out of the way....

I'll be honest. There's a lot of things i like about the new DLC. I like the new mechanics for China, Japan, and Manchu, I really like the Diplomatic Macrobuilder.

But I have to say...The whole Historical Ages thing...It doesn't really interest me one bit. Really, it feels like something pulled straight out of a Civilization game. I don't want to meet arbitrary objectives that the game devs put out for me.I want to do my own thing and set my own objectives. That has been pretty much the draw of the Paradox Strategy Games for me since I started playing them.

Edit: Changed the thread name from Mandate of Heaven to Divine Wind, because I found the fact that this is the fourth thread for EUIV, Divine Wind was the fourth expansion to Europa Universalis III, and both Divine Wind and Mandate of Heaven overhauled Eastern Asia amusing.

1) Think the discussion should about what DLC people should plan to budget to get, and how much use they can be, along with people's reviews of playing with them.

2) And anything else to talk about that is about the game

[Eldan]

Haven't played in a few months, so there's quite a few changes. Started as Mamluks on a whim, and it's quite interesting. For one, the Arabian penninsula is very different. And the Mamluks start with several vassals, plus most of Arabia likes them, so I had quite the vassal swarm early on. Plus with the new mission system, I got a permanent claim on the entire Yemen area, so I'll probably be able to form Arabia soon.

[Leecros]

Its weird. EUIV is still one of my all time favorite games and i'll probably be playing it until EUV comes out(I still dabble in EUIII). However, ever since the revamped mission system came out with Rule Britannia. I have a hard time getting into a game of it like I used to and its difficult for me to explain why without getting all ranty and rambly.


See, with the old mission system. There was a sort of...finesse about it. It allowed there to be nation specific missions while giving you the freedom to do what you want while still usually giving you missions. So if you wanted to say...Become a major colonial power as the Ottomans, you could get missions for that and many of the missions were based on what National Ideas you took. The way that you shape your nation.

With the new mission system, I have a number of problems. The first one is simply the fact that...It's not very big. The New Mission system in EU IV is more or less based off of the focus trees from HoI IV. However, EUIV's mission trees aren't even bigger than the smallest focus tree in HoI IV.

The second problem is that they're super rigid. If you play as England, start colonizing Africa, and forced to move to Africa due to being conquered by an alliance of Scandinavia and France...You're going to be waiting a long time before being able to get benefits from any mission. Also due to this rigidity it pretty much puts the major nations on rails. there's some twists and curves that you could do, but any nation that gets a large amount of benefit out of theirmission tree would be stupid to not go for them.

The third problem I have with the new mission system is that the only rewards that are really worth it are the permanent ones. Which is typically just any that provide permanent claims or development. Pretty much all of the other missions just provide a temporary bonus and while that was great when you had a constant stream of missions with the old system. Since you only have a limited number of missions now, when those temporary bonuses run out. The value of the mission is lost.

The fourth problem is that the mission system makes playing one of the major powers kind of...easy. The amount of permanent claims and free CB's that you can get out of it is kind of ridiculous. Granted, a bunch of them are based off of missions from the old mission system. The fact that they're permanent claims instead of the temporary ones and you can take the mission at a time when it's most convenient for you is a massive change. That means you can use that Force Union CB that England gets on France or Austria gets on Bohemia/Hungary pretty much whenever you want rather than just within a certain time frame.

The fifth problem I have is a bit of a weird one, because I suspect that it will eventually be fixed as time goes on. Playing a nation that doesn't have a unique mission tree is a bit dull now. Since they completely removed the old, more flexible mission system. Any nation that doesn't have a unique mission tree just have three generic...uniteresting ones. This may sound like a contradiction to the Second Problem and it kind of is. However, not getting any missions worth anything and knowing what other nations can have makes playing anyone with generic missions a bit disappointing to play.


Anyway, i'm tired of rambling for now. So here's a screenshot of my most recent game(I've basically won). I'm hoping to at least form The Roman Empire, maybe Mare Nostrum. I have 100 years left, but i'm not holding my breath.

Spoiler

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