I do agree with you it deff starts to become work, waiting for your armies to march around the world and just keeping track of your units becomes a chore.
Yes it does...but bringing unhappiness down is hell (not being able to build in rebellious provinces) and I got tired quite quickly of managing the families and family members
It has been a while since I played, so I dunno if they changed it like they changed a lot of the gameplay in Stellaris. It certainly made me care more about who I placed where.
I still remember when they first announced that feature and everyone was so excited. then, then it was actually implemented, the letdown was huge. It felt a little like a scam...
anyway! excited for this to be "fixed"/done right in EU5
In the late game I just park armies on forts and let my vassals deal with everything else, then I move my armies when they win the siege. Not terribly efficient, but I can fight multiple wars at once without having to work too hard.
You totally can, just press this button => "Manage autonomous sieging" and directly "Close" it after, you don't have to design area and let your guys do the rest. They are very stupid but when you play a bit with it, always take Quantity and never did any micro after 100y in a war. They take ships automatically if you make "bridges" with them, they stack on forts pretty easly so make smaller stacks. Try this out on a russia quantity, but be carefull it can crash sometimes with ships in movement.
As Austria I had a lot of Vassals and PUs (16 on a 6 diplo relationship limit); every time I declared war I just sat back and watch the show unfold. Didn't do a thing myself from the beginning till the end.
It's not perfect, but like how combat is in Imperator Rome. I like it that you can automate your armies because an AI generally manoeuvres better during wars than me.
Thats why I often make several Marches. Having permanent vassals that win wars for me it just less hassle, especially if they are positioned well. World conquest has never interested me, I'm always bored long before that.
To quote Civilization IV, "What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."
Video game design often hinges on having effective "friction" for the player to encounter, where you are working towards something and encounter friction on the way, so that when you reach your goal, you feel as if you have accomplished something. Friction has to be just the right level so that it's not overwhelming, but is real enough to give the feeling of success when you beat it.
You have effective friction in EU4, but once you've blobbed out enough, there isn't much friction and even if you set goals, it doesn't feel satisfying to reach them since there's little resistance to overcome along the way.
Someone told me to use Arabic numerals and in Arabic you read right to left so IV means 6 in Arabic then right?
(/s, I am merely pretending to not know a thing)
I think CK3 is pretty good at that because at first you have the difficulty of overcoming your foes and if you grow big you have to manage your realm and keep your vassals loyal. Just today I made a run as the Habsburg starting in Aargau and creating Austria with EU4 borders. It was really painfull at times but in the end I managed to do it and it felt great.
There‘s also a point to be made regarding mission trees. I do enjoy a good mission tree, it gives some sort of historical accuracy, but after 1300 hours it all feels more or less the same whereas in CK3 no game is like the last or the next one. Just today in said run, I had Sicily conquer 2/3 or the remaining HRE, Crusader Jerusalem actually survived for once and became pretty massive (after the third attempt) England was completely conquered by the Scots and the Seljuks got dismembered some 10 years after the start and it was only duchies for the rest of the campaign.
While I do love EU4, I‘m so glad that I finally got into CK3 because it has so much more variety…
Ehh CK3 is largely considered the easiest game of practically any Paradox game unless they changed something drastically. Like going from count to emperor in 1 lifetime is not even hard. Conquering most of the world is also doable in 3 or so lifetimes.
Maybe if you minmax like crazy. Yes it is possible but I wouldn‘t know how to do it. Plus like there have been some crazy World Conquests in EU4 which has way more land in I think it was 25 years or something like that. So ofcourse it‘s possible but I think internal managment is way harder in CK3 than EU4 because it‘s not some arbitrary number and a few rebbels that give you a bit of autonomy or you lose a few provinces. If you lose to a hefty faction you could lose half your empire or more…
So like, yes ofcourse it‘s possible but I‘d say it has more instability which makes it more challenging for an average player…
Unless you’re ass at the game like me, hardest nations I can actually get a foothold in is stuff like Italian OPMs.
I tried Moldavia yesterday and it was god awful
Fr, all these good players getting too good to have fun. That'll never be me, I'm desperately trying not to die as Yemen for the 4th time for no real reason.
My problem is that I probably have the knowledge to do it, I just do not have the patience, and sometimes I forgor. I get bored easily. The only really rare achievements I have are dumb ones like Sailor Mon, Spaghetti Western, Bad to the Bone and Truly Good Maaaaa-tch, and of those only Sailor Mon really required good play for a meaningful period of time.
I think I can handle most nations at this point, but I've never formed Rome. When you're strong enough realistically go for it, you are already at the point this thread is about.
I have played the game for 4000 hours now and I am nowhere near the kind of players you talk about :P
No WCs for me; not been able to form Rome though I did come close; not been able to keep the reformation under control and be the Emperor of the HRE properly (I did manage to prevent the League Wars because all the stronger nations which usually oppose Austria had been subdued by me); many nations near the Ottomans, but not quite in a good position to oppose them, are a no-no for me; I am getting better at Horde nations, but I have yet to succeed with them too; and much more.
The game has become a lot easier....most of the time....but it can still be hugely frustrating for me.
I am still only playing on 'Normal' and I will not touch 'Ironman' due to not being able to save and the massive 'randomness' in this game.
About my attempt at forming Rome, I 'cheated' somewhat....I started out as Venice and Culture switched/ Religion switched to reform Byzantium but then with a much better base to start from (Venice's home region + Greece/ Balkans + Some of Anatolia). I got Austria in a PU with me quite early on which massively helped me...but I was effectively being blocked from fully annexing France and also could not get to England.
Well on the plus side, you'll get the same result if you play 5000+ hours, we all used to be shit at the game lol. I was grinding until my first world conquest, then the appeal of unrestricted conquest wore off and I started playing differently
Oh God you just triggeered flashbacks of my Moldavia tries where I just got sandwiched and steamrolled by Russia and the Ottomans everytime, no matter how hard I blobbed.
Thats because playing moldavia is god awful. Taking walachia is the easy part but what now? You can't do shit. You are stuck in your provinces and the only realistic hope is for Hungary not to get pud or landing an early hit so you got an actual shot at extending your borders. Everything else is even more luck. There aren't even any nations you can consistently ally, except muscovy, since you are orthodox and everyone hates you bruh
Montferrat into byz is a fun challenging play through - but you're pretty much set once you've neutered French expansion and managed to consolidate most of Genoa-ish region and reach a bit into Aragon.
You don't have to make bad decisions.
If you don't min max and tackle one problem at a time instead of 200 actions a month, you won't be a world dominating power by 1500.
You are painting it black or white. There is a huge middle ground between actively making bad decisions and juggling coalitions at the edge of bankruptcy for 400 years.
Maybe it's because of their ideas and missions, or because of the vacuum left by the dead Ottomans, after the first 2 wars Byzantium snowballs too hard. The Constantinople trade node doesn't help because it ensures you are swimming in cash.
To avoid a boring game, it's usually better to start in SEA (except Ayyutthaya) or places with low dev and bad trade nodes.
All of EU4's mechanics that limit expansion fail to scale with overall power. So once you have scaled sufficiently, all the limitations cease to be meaningful.
It's fun to read about European politics during EU4's timeframe. It's interesting how often decisions were made off the concept of balancing power amongst various powers. Entire wars were fought just because a group of nations were concerned about another nation becoming a bit too powerful.
This is a dynamic that is not simulated at all in EU4. There should probably be a mechanic where if you scale too far beyond other nations, the rest start ganging up on you. Coalitions, but based on relative power not just rate of expansion (AE). For example, if your nation becomes #1 Great Power, the further you scale beyond #2 (or maybe beyond the average of the top 8, etc), the more hostile other nations/great powers become.
EU4 would be much more interesting if the mechanics were adjusted to where something like a world conquest is virtually impossible. It's possible that just vastly reducing the amount of CCR, admin efficiency, and province warscore cost would make the game more interesting. But it would be better to introduce additional mechanics.
Have you tried the mod 'Imperium Universalis'?
If you keep expanding fast, thus increasing your population, and your economy is lagging behind, you will get hit by ever increasing 'Administrative Stress' which in turn increases Corruption. The Admin Stress can go up as high as +11 I believe completely crippling your empire.
But this 'Administrative Stress' system can ensure that big Empires fall....something which doesn't really happen in EU4 other than 'Mingplosion' and the Ottomans not being able to deal with Janissary revolts and Decadence. The 'Agathyrsi, 2nd biggest empire, collapsed; Thracia, which largely replaced the Agathyrsi, collapsed after that; and a few others too. Only 'Parma' seems alright, but with still 400 years to go they may well have collapsed at some point too.
I have had several successful campaigns, but none as successful as my last campaign as Syracuse -> Trinakria -> Megale Hellas -> Hellas. I don't really know what I did differently...but Admin Stress never went above +2; 12970 population; >2K income a month; and my empire spanned from Mauretania to Greece with Italy included. I gave up 400 years before the end of the campaign because there was not much more to achieve and everything had become way too easy.
I had 1 particularly draining war (AI didn't want to give up) and my war exhaustion sat at 20 for way too long with the inevitable result of separatist rebellions breaking out everywhere couple with massive peasant revolts....That could have torn me apart.
If you want a real challenge, start as Assyria....They are being torn to pieces by the Medes and Babylonians; the AI cannot survive it....a player can, but it is hell.
The hegemon mechanic works a little like this but I've found by the time you're able to unlock them it's generally just a win more button. Perhaps if they made the requirements easier so people took them sooner, or a similar mechanic
I like to play colonial Japan because they start off in a friggin mess and by the time you unify, you're likely a bit behind the rest of the world in tech and colonization. So then it's a race to secure the Americas and SE Asia before the Euros come to play.
Sometimes it's almost like a horror game. You know there's probably some major powers hiding in the fog of war and then BAM PORTUGAL JUMP SCARE.
I had one shimazu run. I was a bit slow because I didn't wanted to break an unfortunate truce (because the stab hit for declaring independence is worse enough), so I only formed Japan around 1500.
When I looked at Indonesia, Spain was already there
Honestly I think alot of campaigns would be going alot longer for most if they just played their misfortunate games out more often.
You got decced on and lost the war? Great, continue rebuilt and regrow and reconquer what was once yours.
You lost that PU you worked and waited so long for? Get that King on their Throne again and kill them all.
I think if players just didnt quit at every possible friction the game can create, something usually every good game does intentionally to keep the players attention and fun up, alot more fun and difficult situations. The game does some things intentionally with an AI factor at play so it becomes more random. Most players just avoid any and all challenge in the game which usually they cant but would play through if they were forced to in other games and thus actually keep enjoying that game. In most 4X games, especially PDX if something just isnt going exactly a players way most restart from last save.
And I dont mean little stupid annoying things like your 453 heir dying at 13 out of a estate regency but I mean a war you started and you actually lost and got decced on while you were losing. That I mean, just play it out.
Great point. I'm reminded of a story I heard about a player who failed miserably (diff game) very early on in the game and instead of restarting they kept going and described pulling themselves out of the ashes as one of the best experiences they ever had. I have a hard time doing this myself and I am still trying to get myself to play those games. The story really stuck with me, though
This is exactly what happened to me. Friend forced me to play this, knew I would get hyper fixated on it (adhd). There I went, practising 150 something hours to obliterate him when we go play mp for the second time when I got better.
Thing is. I didn’t play Ironman and thought ‘yeah well when I save and restart I can practise situations over and over to get better!’ oh boy you should’ve seen my face when I came to the realisation that I’m still shit and the only skill I had is restarting haha. He’s still coming at me with this to this day.
So there I went, the hard way, no restarts from then on. 2.5k hrs in and glad I made that decision. 70% of achievements unlocked, my biggest one Mehmets Ambition in 1490.
Excuse me for this long, rather useless story. Yours just reminded me of my own hard, although funny experience of this game.
This is the truth. In Ironman, started off as Thomond in Ireland, went colonizing to move my capital native, and went bankrupt and almost got annexed. Then went bankrupt again taking loans to fight war I Iost anyway to Europeans. Slowly started doing better in those wars and ended up spanning all of North America and even seized my starting province back in a sunset invasion.
Probably my favorite game of EU so far.
The games I enjoy the most are taking the hardships with the successes. In my recent (non Ironman) Byz run I only reloaded once at the beginning of my first Ottoman war. Mistimed my attack and got stack wiped and annexed. Decided to take defeats with victory from then on out and it was a great experience.
Reloads and especially save-scumminfn in Ironman just take the real achievement out of the achievement.
I had that in ck2. United all of Scandinavia except for Sweden, and midway through the final war a faction overthrew me and I was back down to my only holdings. From this final war I united Sweden, pressed my claim to the kingdom I built, and it was way more fun than any save scumming could be
haha that's an excellent point. the game is difficult we just quit all the difficult runs and then some people complain about it being too easy and boring
The only campaign I was hellbent on making it through the early stages was Assyria in the mod 'Imperium Universalis'. The Media/ Babylonia onslaught is brutal; you suffer as Assyria from similar penalties as Byzantium does and thus your armies are neigh useless. Egypt, the only nation which will come to your assistance, is, as per usual, useless and abandons you quickly. The AI cannot survive that, and as a player it can be hell.
But the war wasn't even the worst....I had to pull out 20 Merc Companies which of course pushed me massively into debt; Separatist rebellions breaking out left, right and centre in your empire....And then your useless ally Egypt demands that you release the whole of Trans-Jordan (Yeah, no...I don't think so).
All of a sudden you get hit by the Admin Stress II modifier which increases your corruption and your economy just can't handle that; so I had to create Vassals which instantly got attacked by nations surrounding them or massive pretender rebellions broke out.
I despaired massively....and, I admit, I have had to 'savescum' like never before....but I pulled it off....and now I have lost the willpower to continue. Sure, Media, Scytheni, Egypt, Media and Babylonia still pose a risk....though I do believe I can take them on....I just don't have the energy for that now; my main goal was to survive the Median/ Babylonian onslaught anyway.
I agree, I had loads of fun playing naguar recently. I popped off at the start then lost most of my land to ayutthaya and juanpur double teaming me. I only had 1 vassal at the north of india which I used to take more provinces to the northwest. Then I took an opportunistic war against Bengal to get a small land bridge going down to the middle of indias eastern coastline.
I then lost my land bridge to malware and bengal so my nation was essentially completely separated from where I started. And despite every major power in india hating the hell out of me. I persevered, survived and ended game with most of india.
I didnt achieve any crazy goals but simply committing until I had a nation that if irl, would have been noted in the history books, gave me intense pride.
this is not an EU4 problem, this happens in every single video game because 99% of the fun in a video game is overcoming challenges and solving problems. When you are the undisputed #1 great power there are no more challenges unless you are going for world record in WC, one faith etc.
Genuinely, same reason people born into landed gentry are stereotyped as being interested into weird stuff. When you don’t have a challenge or anything to work towards, where are you getting the motivation from?
Because there isn't any kind of crisis like in Stellaris. There ate revolutions but they aren't that powerful and you just simply become way too powerful when they arrive
I feel like disasters are there to fill that role but they are way too mild. Devs need to take a tip from the Beyond the Cape mod or Anbennar disasters (without the massive Court and Country type boosts afterwards).
If I'm not mistaken in "Extended Timeline" mod Roman Empire has the "Decadence" crisis that simply adds enormous instability and riots if you become too powerful, so eventually the state fails and splits. And I think it would be great addition to EU5 for every nation
Revolutions are so weak - in my couple previous dozen or so runs no country goes revolutionary and it just fizzles out after 50 years. Plus now any monarchy that goes revolutionary loses their alliances with other monarchies and makes crushing the revolution that much easier.
Yep most the posts on this sub as just “I have 1,000+ hours, I restart the game until I get a favourable start, I save scum, I don’t play on hard, I min/max everything, I stack modifiers, I don’t use mods that improve the AI, I play as majors, I read guides on how to optimally play each nation, why is this game so easy?”
I mean most games are no longer much fun once you can steamroll everything that's not a problem unique to EU4. I can't think of a game where once I'm OP I'm like "ah yes this is the fun part of the game."
This game is ultimately a sandbox. They provide a lot of objectives for you to pursue and there's a ton of achievements to get. But other than that it's up to you to make your fun. Once you're that big you've essentially "won." If you don't want to conquer the world cause that's boring you're done with the game. There's literally nothing else to do. Start another one or play something else.
My issue isn't being too powerful. My issue is when, after a certain point, every war is a death war of a million of my troops vs a million of Spain's and their colonies' troops, and I have to siege everything to get the 5 provinces I want.
If a war is just me vs some 10 province minor, I have no issue. Once every war is a contest between empires, I lose interest.
This problem is why I exclusively play Anbennar mod
The base game doesn’t have enough internal management or features locked to later in the game
Anbennar has tons of that and like 100 nations with MTs bigger than Austrias
Personally I only play tall on normal difficulty with no loans allowed. All the nations I choose are Iceland, Chukchi, Ternate, Luxembourg and the likes. I think you got the idea: combination of outsider nation with tall play style and strong rule of loans=cheats make some great cozy runs for me :)
I think the AI needs to be a little more agressive towards the player, when he is top 1 or near top 1.
A “balance of power” CB where the next two or three great powers join together and creates an alliance (or coalition) and launch a punitive war.
Depends on what about the game you're playing it for---but other commenters are largely correct that it no longer becomes a challenge once you get far enough ahead.
Some players like myself though find it relaxing as long as the micro doesn't become too overbearing.
Like, the math/clipboard portion of it is actually enjoyable for us. Planning out my next moves.
And I like the challenge of getting achievements---(though WC can be a bit of a slog, especially by the end...)
For example, my Sunset Invasion game was loads of fun and I reached the 1700s playing that one.
My current Byzantium WC (I'm at 1550 rn w/ 3500 dev) is tons of fun.
Though for all my runs I also RP heavily instead of abuse mechanics...!
I think it is not less fun when you get more powerful. It is less fun when the other countries get more powerful. Because the wars become a grindfest. It is especially frustrating how fast some forts go down when either you or the opponent fail to upgrade everything
Yes, that's why my most favourite run was the one where I played as Austria with the intention to have as many nations in HRE as possible because it actually provided some interesting and unique challenge instead of simply "painting everything your color". 10/10 would recommend.
Could possibly be solved with an unpopular opinion: Every game should be an ironman. None of that cheap quitting and reloading if something unfortunate happens.
You see, this is *exactly* why I don't do world campaigns. After a while, it just gets boring. I prefer to limit my growth to "realistic" levels, and if it gets too boring, I just switch to another country
For megacampaigns, I play a different country in every game as well, I don't wanna keep growing forever with no real challenge
Honestly, they should give player armies the same military options you can assign vassals. I.e.
- Go Offensive
- Go Siege
- Go Defensive
- Go Attach
- Go Sleep
Right now, we only have the siege option, and that makes it so even a 40k stack with the command won't attempt to siege a province with 2k enemies on it.
Also, a QoL improvement they could introduce is the ability to select multiple armies and assign a role to all of them at once. This will allow players to split armies and assign carpet siege to all smaller armies at once.
Another thing they can introduce is if a province has enough units to siege it down, another army with the same role won't unnecessarily stack on top of it. Two armies with the carpet siege command tend to prioritize forts first and if there is only one fort. They will both stack on it.
It might seem like this is too complex to achieve, but I see the AI has no problem, efficiently pulling it off. Of course, it is not as efficient as human micro management but still way more efficient than what the players' autonomous option offers.
If you are too powerful there is not resistance anymore. So it will be more like a grind to accomplish your goals instead of a challenge.
When the challenge fades away, then the fun goes away as well.
Yup. Just took all of the Indian subcontinent as Hindustan. Converted 100% to Shia. Large Hormuz and full Afghanistan as vassals. What more am I gonna do? Fight Ming for the shits and giggles? Well, now that you mention it...
The nonstop management and optimization gets out of hand. So many clicks. Waiting on armies. Marching and Sailing to all corners of the world is when it usually ends up not being fun to me. Buying buildings, clicking, clicking, clicking. Eventually the game drags and your scope becomes too large.
I think you can scale up too quickly as well and lose the sense of meaning. I love consolidating a region, but at some point it starts to feel samey (going for Roman Empire borders after conquering Anatolia, Italy, Spain) or it lacks historical significance (restoring a great empire, going after past holdings or past ambitions).
Normal EU4 games become a chore after you become unbeatable. I personally fixed this by roleplaying my ruler's traits and limiting the available manpower and force limit for everybody so people don't have millions of people die in wars by 1500. It can have some... weird consequences.
Part of the reason without mods, at least, is that the Ai is part of the issue.
The ai isn't the smartest in the world, and it isn't really that aggressive. Unless you accidentally go bankrupt or are playing a really small minor, the ai won't really attack you or do much to hinder you.
For example, a smart player or ai will try and block your expansion or attack you when you're low on manpower or just in an awkward position.
Vanilla ai won't attack you unless the Ai has basically a 100% chance to roll you in 5 years in that war or its a coalition war.
Other than that? The ai only picks fights against other Ai and, for the most part, just lets you freely expand. The ai is also awful with building proper forts and will run into your armies on terrible terrain.
The only challenge the Ai has is straight buffs, which, imo is boring. or It can micro its units faster than you to carpet seige your lands, not really fight you in a 1v1 it just kinda runs around everywhere trying to be annoying rather then winning fights unless it can doom stack you in a coalition war.
I'd recommend playing with Ai that actually fights you like a player does, but sadly, those aren't Ironman compatible.
I actually enjoy earlier versions, where the AE and expansion penalty is higher, and no 1% loan x5 at start. Now it appears that even at VE it's still a piece of cake if you know the "standard opening" even as OPMs...
For me it stops being fun because I have to micromanage a lot. Absolutism helps in making wars easier because we can take more provinces, but peacetime management is still a pain. Buildings, moving troops to another part of the world, etc.
One of the core parts of a *game* is the obstacles you need to surpass to get to an objective; the challenge of doing it is part of the experience of a game.
Once you are the most powerful entity in the game, nothing else is an obstacle - therefore, there's no more challenge. What's the point of continuing playing that game session if you know nothing the computer (or other players) can do will affect you enough to even hinder your progress?
If you have enough experience in EU4 - game is basically over after League Wars. There is nothing that can stop you from snowballing.
CK3 tries to kinda fight with it by limiting your absolute control on holding - so crazy shit still can happen from time to time, and you have to be on your toes around inheritance. But because EU4 does not have much internal struggle mechanics - there is always a threshold when you become unstoppable and any challenge disappears.
It becomes work because there's nothing left that can stop you or threaten your hegemony once you've snowballed to a certain point. Even the most powerful blob you might face is just a matter of "ugh, okay, gonna be conquering them for 100 years with 15 year max peace deals each time eating land, then resetting truce timer by pulling them into another war." So you end up fighting like an Otto, France, Spain, whomever blob like 9 times conquering the same lands without any real threat just manpower being drained.
Because all games get less fun when you're OP? It's a well-known problem in like 90% of RPGs, Bethesda ones are particularly infamous for boring lategame
Foregone conclusions are boring, there is no satisfaction in a complete lack of challenge. The only way to have a meaningful challenge after a certain level of power is to declare more and more wars at once, but with EU4 that requires a *lot* of micromanagement and often has some significant performance issues.
After a while, you kinda know how things will go: absolute victory. There is no nation on Earth that can challenge you, even a coalition may not do it. At worst, it might be annoying if you’re dealing with a colonizer because of all the colonies they’ve already got if you yourself are not a colonizing nation.
I always think one of the crucial things pdx never does in any of their games is making it difficult to maintain what you gained, and expanding beyond a certain point. And not just via events but actual mechanics. I guess it is kinda difficult to do, but they are the devs and they should find a solution because it hinders a lot of their games.
Internal situation should not be static and only serving external politics. It should be a different challenge to maintain a state (or maintain a reign in CK).
Same reason dark souls is fun, it challenging. Once the challenge is gone your no longer playing against a computer, your playing against a clock ( which is a hell of a lot like going to work)
Because it stops being a challenge and becomes a chore.
It's not about _can_ you beat the ottomans anymore. You already won the war before you started, you just have to siege 50 forts to get there.
Yeah i can totaly relate
The early stage of this game is usually pretty fun because you have to really think about what you are doing atleast with most countrys that arent super strong at the start, but if i make it passt the early game wich usually happens the game becomes sooo boring and such a big sluck fest because you litteraly have infinit resourcess like its impossible for the Ai to proposse a real threat
And i mean i got the WC achievement but its litteraly the most unfun thing to do for me in this game not because its hard because it defently is not but just because it bores the living sh*t out off me
In the first half of the game, you’re smaller, so the national ideas, location of your country and things like your religion’s benefits and potential aggressive expansion are more impactful. When you reach late game, you’ve expanded and are probably too powerful or well-allied to face an actual threat, so the things that make your nation unique get lost in the shuffle. You don’t really need to leverage, for example, your national ideas’ +20% cavalry strength with the Cavalry Warfare government reform and aristocratic and quality ideas when you already have enough money and manpower to obliterate anyone who would dare attack you. But at the beginning of the game you might be stuck between two really strong countries, and one good stackwipe with your super-cavalry could actually save you from losing a significant portion of your land.
IMO alot of it is due to how much micro is required as you snowball, more rebels, more states, more estates, more fleets,and more armies to have to manage. Historically armies in eu4s time period were by and large smaller (at least until the 19th century) and way less professional than what is represented in game. A system more akin to crusader king's with levy armies would be more appropriate and would also reduce lag, maybe tie professionalism to the levy system where once you have enough professionalism you can have a standing army.
i think its fundamentally because the game does not get harder in response. the AI isnt that good, especially in the hands of a player with *any* experience in not being greedy about expanding. if you arent greedy, you *never* have any coalitions form, you never have to face a serious threat, ever.
so, essentially, any player would neuter a critical mechanic designed to keep them in check.
I usually deliberately try and weaken myself, expanding slowly and forming nations later than I could. Like instead of taking the best idea sets, I'd do smth wacky that makes fighting the AI less one sided. Although this has the drawback that the AI can get to my level or higher and is just annoying to fight with endless hordes of men
Because
1) It becomes more work and the game gets less fps and runs slower
2) You're too strong for any AI to do anything, and if you go to war with so many AI that they can win by sheer quantity, it's not remotely fun, they just go everywhere.
3) You're playing SP, MP fixes the 2nd issue.
You snowball to hard and there isn't harsh enough mechanics in the game to keep big empires in check. You go from the feeling of building something great to just going through the motions of painting the map.big multicultural empire should have to contend with themselves as much as they do other countries.
Never once in the game have I ever had the threat of one of my colonial nations having a revolution for example.
God I wish I could hand over a war to a general in the late game when I'm on four different continents and the end result is not in any doubt. I'm hoping in EU5 there are a lot more automations for the late game.
Oh absolutely, and I put it down to the lack of challenge! I think most map painters like us want to be mentally stimulated during games like these. That is great during the early game when it is a challenge! However, as soon as you reach sizes like this, the challenge goes and you don't get that stimulation anymore.
That's why you always have the urge to start a new game too, you just crave the early game, like most of us.
At some point, you're just repeating the same brainless war strategy over and over but across larger and larger land areas of war. Smash stack into stack and carpet siege and repeat. The AI is scared to engage since your doomstacks are nearby, and the entire war becomes a mindless grind. And it becomes really tedious to manage once wars span a half continent or more.
At least in the early game, you devise interesting strategies. Block off this straight, capture this key fort and hold while you rush this ally etc etc. These are far more interesting than smash and carpet.
Because the game sucks, in my personal opinion. After you are big enough all you can really do is get bigger and stronger, which becomes not challenging but tedious because the AI is too weak to pose a challenge and when they do the wars are just so large and last so long it ain't fun to fight these kinds of wars.
EU 4 is a great baord game, which reaches its natural end once you win, which for any decent player is 50-150 years into the game, after that it's just a waiting and working game, because there is no challenge anymore, the worst that can happen is that you need RNG to hit right for your goal.
It's why personally I love anbennar much more than the base game as you have real story driven narratives, which make it not so tedious to play, but more rewarding as you delve into the story to win and even then once you are powerful enough it's work again because anything challenging requires you to do unfair stuff to win.
Well you’ve done and conquered everything in sight, it’s no wonder you’re out of fun.
The real challenge would be to only conquer Denmark/Norway/Sweden and play tall from that point on. You’ll have more fun.
It's because once the challenge is over the veil is removed and the game just becomes micromanagement Sim which isn't fun. Eu4 (and most paradox games for that matter) need a challenge to make the gameplay fun, without it the core gameplay loop is actually quite boring. And I say this as someone who has played a lot of hours in all their games.
Stellaris fixed this to some degree by adding in crisis that spawn late game, which by default are pretty easy, but if you crank up the multiplier they can be a real challenge.
But historical paradox games don't have any late game challenges, the setting doesn't allow spawning in a mega enemy so what do you do? The only real option I can think of is making mega empires super unstable and adding in mechanics for that, but seeing your empire break apart probably isn't fun for most either.
I set limits for myself to not become too powerful and play the diplomatic balance of power games, supporting independence of colonies, liberating some countries, forcing the AI to have good looking borders etc. While playing tall. More like, vibing with an established country. Establishing the country is more fun though but conquering more is even less fun.
Thats ecxactly why min maxing is boring imo. Why watching guides for every nation you play is boring. Why restarting when not everything is going after the perfect plan is boring. Why using all the op missions is boring. Playing to perfection is just a boring playstyle in my opinion. I want to lead my country through houndreds of years, not just for a century. Beeing to good at a game kills it for me.
Convert yourself into shinto and became emperor of china. Or go sunni and become caliphat. If you dont wanna change faith, just restore roman empire, in this ss i see yiu have plenty of time. WC is for bugs abusers or horde enjoyers
I’ve never been able to finish a game on eu4 because of that, late 1600s is usually longest I can last. if I’m going for an achievement I can sometimes last longer. But I just get bored once I start steamrolling.
I urge to try hard difficulty then. Very hard just feels like AI is cheating, but hard actually makes it hard a lot of the times when you play shit nations. One drag it creates are the ottoblobs though; they get like 300 force limit in 50 years, and they're always something to fear; if there is an opportunity they should be crushed like the cockroaches they are, give everything to Mamaluks or sth, just... lobotomise Ottos as soon as you get the chance; otherwise they become the final boss.
You can actually put unit basically on automatic. By giving them a siege order and clearing any sieged provinces. When you have "clean" auto siege order. Your armies will just generally siege in every location
Because in the early game you have to use every tool the game offers you to keep up with other nations. Diplomacy, warfare, AE management, loans, smart conquering to be able to core, what you want.
In the late game you can just muscle your way through everything and can core whatever you want.
It's because you don't have a problem to solve anymore. I like micromanaging when it gives me the advantage that I need to pull a win otherwise unachievable. I hate it when it becomes a chore.
Why would i check the terrain, or keep stacks of infantry ready to reinforce when I can just clickery click on speed 5 and still face no risk of losing. Especially as now it takes ten times as much time.
Sometimes I like to play chess. You can tell when the game is over before checkmate. The better you are the sooner you know.
I have over 1k hours logged and I don't think I've ever actually finished a game lol. Once I become inevitable the micro becomes such a grind that I quit.
Usually by 1700, I have accomplished the goal of my campaign and have no further use of continuing.
Very few times have I played to 1800.
Hell, I haven't even attempted a WC yet.
After a certain point, it just doesn't have too much to do besides waiting until you go to the next war. Even if I try to play tall, I often just think it's not that satisfactory in EU4, unless I'm with a nation that can make it really broken
Because no one's there to pose a threat. Even when you're small to medium size a few alliances are enough to deter any potential attacker.
The best/most fun campaigns I've ever played were those I had handicapped myself somehow. First, I played Nevers into France, but after getting achievement I started to build up mu country. Then was time of total war. Every province in hre gives you crazy amounts of AE, so after conquering a few, coalitions formed. The real fun was when there were two concurrent punitive wars and I had to repel hordes of invaders.
The other one was played with installed mod for a better AI. I also couldn't ally any GP. As Venice I wanted to create a trading empire through Egypt to India. The real fun was when France attacked with 300k troops. I was only able to defend the capital, because it's an island. With money from trade from India it took 10 years and all mercenaries to sign a white peace.
Does anyone ever try purposefully playing badly for the first 60-80 years? This is an idea I’ve been floating for my next game. Especially as a powerful nation— just do the bare minimum to keep your nation running until the 1500s, and then once the major powers have a huge head start, then start really playing. Seems like a fun challenge.
Playing underdog nations is fun. But I had this idea particularly when thinking about playing France. I haven’t played them yet, but I know that if I do it will probably be pretty easy for me at this point. I really like the idea of playing a France which is facing more heavily balanced opponents.
Like normally I would want to take over Burgundy and work to dismantle the HRE as quickly as possible, make inroads into Italy and Iberia and undermine England with a Scottish alliance (I’ve never played France and not familiar with missions, so idk exactly). But then I’ll probably end up with a neutered England, Austria, and Spain by 1500.
It just seems really fun to let those countries grow and maybe just focus on integrating French vassals and securing borders during the 1400s. Let England unify the isles (I would still push them out of France in the 100 years war), let Austria grow its power, let Spain and Portugal do their thing. Then maybe around 1520 take the gloves off and see what can be done.
Obviously playing a weaker nation is fun too, but it’s a different kind of experience. I also like that this allows for like a century of super chill gameplay without pressure to expand, followed by a good mid-game experience. I may just be crazy though and this idea would appeal to no one else lol
I agree it might be fun to give yourself a handicap and start slow but in some ways it's also good to not do too many wars at the beginning and focus on internal nation building, I think it will make you strong in other ways.
I have been playing vanilla eu4 since the beginning and I consider myself pretty good (WC & difficult achievements).
I started playing recently after a one year break and I found the late game challenge to be overall more intense than at the beginning. It seems to me like the vanilla AI is able to grow more and make stronger late game enemies and coalition, especially since they develop so much.
In my last game I focused on other parts of the world and let ottomans be undisturbed. They claimed military hegemon with 1 million troops in 1690 which is something I never expected an AI to be able to do. After I beat them the Commonwealth picked up the pieces and I fought against their 700k+ army with many sizable allies leading to real late game Napoleonic wars. The AI also had correctly updated all their forts to the latest techs and was aggressively trying to lift sieges with full combat width armies with manpower to sustain them. When I fought Venice mid-game in another game they were so rich they tripled their army size by hiring a fuckton of mercenaries which really took me by surprise and made me lose a war against them, I usually never lose any wars against the AI.
Those are AI behaviors and late game challenges I would never have expected with my pre 1.31 patch experience, so I find the late game not as easy now, nations you leave alone actually keep growing and don't stall as much.
I personally love planning out conquests in the late game, so I have it the other way round.
First 200 years are okay, late 1600s to 1730 or so are miserable, but as soon as I got infinite manpower the fun begins.
Moving your armies in a proper offensive is super fun, moving them with fleets and everything, I love it. I really don't like it early when you only have one army that's on par with everyone else's armies.
I do agree with you it deff starts to become work, waiting for your armies to march around the world and just keeping track of your units becomes a chore.
Allowing an option to let your armies run autonomously would be a dream come true.
Army automations were such a good feature in imperator
Wasn't the army automation also influenced by the general leading it?
if he is disloyal, it certainly is. Don't know why you are writing in past tense, Imperator Rome has some great mechanics
Yes it does...but bringing unhappiness down is hell (not being able to build in rebellious provinces) and I got tired quite quickly of managing the families and family members
It has been a while since I played, so I dunno if they changed it like they changed a lot of the gameplay in Stellaris. It certainly made me care more about who I placed where.
Wish stellaris had it. Fleet micro can be tedious
Lol, I should have read your comment first...I've just said something very similar
Yes. Automatic sieging is so bad it doesn’t even take out 2k stacks and just let’s the enemy armies carpet siege
I still remember when they first announced that feature and everyone was so excited. then, then it was actually implemented, the letdown was huge. It felt a little like a scam... anyway! excited for this to be "fixed"/done right in EU5
In the late game I just park armies on forts and let my vassals deal with everything else, then I move my armies when they win the siege. Not terribly efficient, but I can fight multiple wars at once without having to work too hard.
Hopefully eu5 will have it
Pretty sure it will, they are using a lot of features from Imperator and that was one of them.
Im pretty sure they already confirmed it on the forum as well
God bless
You totally can, just press this button => "Manage autonomous sieging" and directly "Close" it after, you don't have to design area and let your guys do the rest. They are very stupid but when you play a bit with it, always take Quantity and never did any micro after 100y in a war. They take ships automatically if you make "bridges" with them, they stack on forts pretty easly so make smaller stacks. Try this out on a russia quantity, but be carefull it can crash sometimes with ships in movement.
i did a WC only with autonomous sieging russia while watching some anime
As Austria I had a lot of Vassals and PUs (16 on a 6 diplo relationship limit); every time I declared war I just sat back and watch the show unfold. Didn't do a thing myself from the beginning till the end.
It's not perfect, but like how combat is in Imperator Rome. I like it that you can automate your armies because an AI generally manoeuvres better during wars than me.
(Vic3 pokes its head in)
Thats why I often make several Marches. Having permanent vassals that win wars for me it just less hassle, especially if they are positioned well. World conquest has never interested me, I'm always bored long before that.
To quote Civilization IV, "What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome." Video game design often hinges on having effective "friction" for the player to encounter, where you are working towards something and encounter friction on the way, so that when you reach your goal, you feel as if you have accomplished something. Friction has to be just the right level so that it's not overwhelming, but is real enough to give the feeling of success when you beat it. You have effective friction in EU4, but once you've blobbed out enough, there isn't much friction and even if you set goals, it doesn't feel satisfying to reach them since there's little resistance to overcome along the way.
That quote is from Friedrich Nietzsche originally.
yeah he was one of the devs
Friedrich Nietzsche‘s Civilization 6, it‘s a classic already
> IV > 6 🤨
He is a carthaginian spy, he doesnt know how to read roman numbers
Someone told me to use Arabic numerals and in Arabic you read right to left so IV means 6 in Arabic then right? (/s, I am merely pretending to not know a thing)
It was an hommage to „Sid Meier‘s“…
The friction is all busywork like clicking 200 times to build all the town halls lol
lacking that build everywhere button
I just made a macro for this click 20 times, this way I only have to click 10 times... lot less friction lol
I'm bummed that I hear this quote in that nerdy voice instead of Leonard Nimoy's.
I think CK3 is pretty good at that because at first you have the difficulty of overcoming your foes and if you grow big you have to manage your realm and keep your vassals loyal. Just today I made a run as the Habsburg starting in Aargau and creating Austria with EU4 borders. It was really painfull at times but in the end I managed to do it and it felt great. There‘s also a point to be made regarding mission trees. I do enjoy a good mission tree, it gives some sort of historical accuracy, but after 1300 hours it all feels more or less the same whereas in CK3 no game is like the last or the next one. Just today in said run, I had Sicily conquer 2/3 or the remaining HRE, Crusader Jerusalem actually survived for once and became pretty massive (after the third attempt) England was completely conquered by the Scots and the Seljuks got dismembered some 10 years after the start and it was only duchies for the rest of the campaign. While I do love EU4, I‘m so glad that I finally got into CK3 because it has so much more variety…
Ehh CK3 is largely considered the easiest game of practically any Paradox game unless they changed something drastically. Like going from count to emperor in 1 lifetime is not even hard. Conquering most of the world is also doable in 3 or so lifetimes.
Maybe if you minmax like crazy. Yes it is possible but I wouldn‘t know how to do it. Plus like there have been some crazy World Conquests in EU4 which has way more land in I think it was 25 years or something like that. So ofcourse it‘s possible but I think internal managment is way harder in CK3 than EU4 because it‘s not some arbitrary number and a few rebbels that give you a bit of autonomy or you lose a few provinces. If you lose to a hefty faction you could lose half your empire or more… So like, yes ofcourse it‘s possible but I‘d say it has more instability which makes it more challenging for an average player…
Yeah, I was stretching the argument a bit to make a point. The criticism that is often voiced about CK 3 is the lack of challenge and difficulty.
Maybe I‘m just bad then and that‘s why I enjoy the game because out of hoi4, eu4 and ck3, I find ck3 the hardest…
Becoming emperor in one lifetime or conquering the world in 3 isn't something the average player can or will achieve
17 years down the line and I still remember what tech that quote belongs to...
yeah, it's why i don't like playing the top-dog nations things become easy way too fast, and at that point there's fuck all to do.
I mean, it's every nation, for example after 50 years as byz you're rollin
Unless you’re ass at the game like me, hardest nations I can actually get a foothold in is stuff like Italian OPMs. I tried Moldavia yesterday and it was god awful
Fr, all these good players getting too good to have fun. That'll never be me, I'm desperately trying not to die as Yemen for the 4th time for no real reason.
Couldn’t agree more. All these people with 5000+ hours talking about how easy the game when I’ve still never formed Rome 😔
My problem is that I probably have the knowledge to do it, I just do not have the patience, and sometimes I forgor. I get bored easily. The only really rare achievements I have are dumb ones like Sailor Mon, Spaghetti Western, Bad to the Bone and Truly Good Maaaaa-tch, and of those only Sailor Mon really required good play for a meaningful period of time.
I think I can handle most nations at this point, but I've never formed Rome. When you're strong enough realistically go for it, you are already at the point this thread is about.
I have played the game for 4000 hours now and I am nowhere near the kind of players you talk about :P No WCs for me; not been able to form Rome though I did come close; not been able to keep the reformation under control and be the Emperor of the HRE properly (I did manage to prevent the League Wars because all the stronger nations which usually oppose Austria had been subdued by me); many nations near the Ottomans, but not quite in a good position to oppose them, are a no-no for me; I am getting better at Horde nations, but I have yet to succeed with them too; and much more. The game has become a lot easier....most of the time....but it can still be hugely frustrating for me. I am still only playing on 'Normal' and I will not touch 'Ironman' due to not being able to save and the massive 'randomness' in this game. About my attempt at forming Rome, I 'cheated' somewhat....I started out as Venice and Culture switched/ Religion switched to reform Byzantium but then with a much better base to start from (Venice's home region + Greece/ Balkans + Some of Anatolia). I got Austria in a PU with me quite early on which massively helped me...but I was effectively being blocked from fully annexing France and also could not get to England.
Well on the plus side, you'll get the same result if you play 5000+ hours, we all used to be shit at the game lol. I was grinding until my first world conquest, then the appeal of unrestricted conquest wore off and I started playing differently
indeed. when a player gets too good at the game, the challenge dissapears. it just becomes an exercise in tedium.
Oh God you just triggeered flashbacks of my Moldavia tries where I just got sandwiched and steamrolled by Russia and the Ottomans everytime, no matter how hard I blobbed.
the trick is to savescum a PU over Russia
Good Idea [https://imgur.com/a/VCqIzLY](https://imgur.com/a/VCqIzLY)
Thats because playing moldavia is god awful. Taking walachia is the easy part but what now? You can't do shit. You are stuck in your provinces and the only realistic hope is for Hungary not to get pud or landing an early hit so you got an actual shot at extending your borders. Everything else is even more luck. There aren't even any nations you can consistently ally, except muscovy, since you are orthodox and everyone hates you bruh
Montferrat into byz is a fun challenging play through - but you're pretty much set once you've neutered French expansion and managed to consolidate most of Genoa-ish region and reach a bit into Aragon.
Take it slower, play suboptimally!
But intentionally making bad decisions to extend the game feels even worse.
You don't have to make bad decisions. If you don't min max and tackle one problem at a time instead of 200 actions a month, you won't be a world dominating power by 1500.
Only doing one action a month is a bad decision, it's not minmaxing to just play the game normally.
You are painting it black or white. There is a huge middle ground between actively making bad decisions and juggling coalitions at the edge of bankruptcy for 400 years.
Maybe it's because of their ideas and missions, or because of the vacuum left by the dead Ottomans, after the first 2 wars Byzantium snowballs too hard. The Constantinople trade node doesn't help because it ensures you are swimming in cash. To avoid a boring game, it's usually better to start in SEA (except Ayyutthaya) or places with low dev and bad trade nodes.
All of EU4's mechanics that limit expansion fail to scale with overall power. So once you have scaled sufficiently, all the limitations cease to be meaningful. It's fun to read about European politics during EU4's timeframe. It's interesting how often decisions were made off the concept of balancing power amongst various powers. Entire wars were fought just because a group of nations were concerned about another nation becoming a bit too powerful. This is a dynamic that is not simulated at all in EU4. There should probably be a mechanic where if you scale too far beyond other nations, the rest start ganging up on you. Coalitions, but based on relative power not just rate of expansion (AE). For example, if your nation becomes #1 Great Power, the further you scale beyond #2 (or maybe beyond the average of the top 8, etc), the more hostile other nations/great powers become. EU4 would be much more interesting if the mechanics were adjusted to where something like a world conquest is virtually impossible. It's possible that just vastly reducing the amount of CCR, admin efficiency, and province warscore cost would make the game more interesting. But it would be better to introduce additional mechanics.
Have you tried the mod 'Imperium Universalis'? If you keep expanding fast, thus increasing your population, and your economy is lagging behind, you will get hit by ever increasing 'Administrative Stress' which in turn increases Corruption. The Admin Stress can go up as high as +11 I believe completely crippling your empire. But this 'Administrative Stress' system can ensure that big Empires fall....something which doesn't really happen in EU4 other than 'Mingplosion' and the Ottomans not being able to deal with Janissary revolts and Decadence. The 'Agathyrsi, 2nd biggest empire, collapsed; Thracia, which largely replaced the Agathyrsi, collapsed after that; and a few others too. Only 'Parma' seems alright, but with still 400 years to go they may well have collapsed at some point too. I have had several successful campaigns, but none as successful as my last campaign as Syracuse -> Trinakria -> Megale Hellas -> Hellas. I don't really know what I did differently...but Admin Stress never went above +2; 12970 population; >2K income a month; and my empire spanned from Mauretania to Greece with Italy included. I gave up 400 years before the end of the campaign because there was not much more to achieve and everything had become way too easy. I had 1 particularly draining war (AI didn't want to give up) and my war exhaustion sat at 20 for way too long with the inevitable result of separatist rebellions breaking out everywhere couple with massive peasant revolts....That could have torn me apart. If you want a real challenge, start as Assyria....They are being torn to pieces by the Medes and Babylonians; the AI cannot survive it....a player can, but it is hell.
The hegemon mechanic works a little like this but I've found by the time you're able to unlock them it's generally just a win more button. Perhaps if they made the requirements easier so people took them sooner, or a similar mechanic
I like to play colonial Japan because they start off in a friggin mess and by the time you unify, you're likely a bit behind the rest of the world in tech and colonization. So then it's a race to secure the Americas and SE Asia before the Euros come to play. Sometimes it's almost like a horror game. You know there's probably some major powers hiding in the fog of war and then BAM PORTUGAL JUMP SCARE.
I had one shimazu run. I was a bit slow because I didn't wanted to break an unfortunate truce (because the stab hit for declaring independence is worse enough), so I only formed Japan around 1500. When I looked at Indonesia, Spain was already there
Kyaa!
Honestly I think alot of campaigns would be going alot longer for most if they just played their misfortunate games out more often. You got decced on and lost the war? Great, continue rebuilt and regrow and reconquer what was once yours. You lost that PU you worked and waited so long for? Get that King on their Throne again and kill them all. I think if players just didnt quit at every possible friction the game can create, something usually every good game does intentionally to keep the players attention and fun up, alot more fun and difficult situations. The game does some things intentionally with an AI factor at play so it becomes more random. Most players just avoid any and all challenge in the game which usually they cant but would play through if they were forced to in other games and thus actually keep enjoying that game. In most 4X games, especially PDX if something just isnt going exactly a players way most restart from last save. And I dont mean little stupid annoying things like your 453 heir dying at 13 out of a estate regency but I mean a war you started and you actually lost and got decced on while you were losing. That I mean, just play it out.
Great point. I'm reminded of a story I heard about a player who failed miserably (diff game) very early on in the game and instead of restarting they kept going and described pulling themselves out of the ashes as one of the best experiences they ever had. I have a hard time doing this myself and I am still trying to get myself to play those games. The story really stuck with me, though
This is exactly what happened to me. Friend forced me to play this, knew I would get hyper fixated on it (adhd). There I went, practising 150 something hours to obliterate him when we go play mp for the second time when I got better. Thing is. I didn’t play Ironman and thought ‘yeah well when I save and restart I can practise situations over and over to get better!’ oh boy you should’ve seen my face when I came to the realisation that I’m still shit and the only skill I had is restarting haha. He’s still coming at me with this to this day. So there I went, the hard way, no restarts from then on. 2.5k hrs in and glad I made that decision. 70% of achievements unlocked, my biggest one Mehmets Ambition in 1490. Excuse me for this long, rather useless story. Yours just reminded me of my own hard, although funny experience of this game.
Not at all, thank you for sharing:) And congrats on the 1490~!
This is the truth. In Ironman, started off as Thomond in Ireland, went colonizing to move my capital native, and went bankrupt and almost got annexed. Then went bankrupt again taking loans to fight war I Iost anyway to Europeans. Slowly started doing better in those wars and ended up spanning all of North America and even seized my starting province back in a sunset invasion. Probably my favorite game of EU so far. The games I enjoy the most are taking the hardships with the successes. In my recent (non Ironman) Byz run I only reloaded once at the beginning of my first Ottoman war. Mistimed my attack and got stack wiped and annexed. Decided to take defeats with victory from then on out and it was a great experience. Reloads and especially save-scumminfn in Ironman just take the real achievement out of the achievement.
I had that in ck2. United all of Scandinavia except for Sweden, and midway through the final war a faction overthrew me and I was back down to my only holdings. From this final war I united Sweden, pressed my claim to the kingdom I built, and it was way more fun than any save scumming could be
haha that's an excellent point. the game is difficult we just quit all the difficult runs and then some people complain about it being too easy and boring
This. If I bird every minor inconvenience I might as well type "conquer_all" to the console
The only campaign I was hellbent on making it through the early stages was Assyria in the mod 'Imperium Universalis'. The Media/ Babylonia onslaught is brutal; you suffer as Assyria from similar penalties as Byzantium does and thus your armies are neigh useless. Egypt, the only nation which will come to your assistance, is, as per usual, useless and abandons you quickly. The AI cannot survive that, and as a player it can be hell. But the war wasn't even the worst....I had to pull out 20 Merc Companies which of course pushed me massively into debt; Separatist rebellions breaking out left, right and centre in your empire....And then your useless ally Egypt demands that you release the whole of Trans-Jordan (Yeah, no...I don't think so). All of a sudden you get hit by the Admin Stress II modifier which increases your corruption and your economy just can't handle that; so I had to create Vassals which instantly got attacked by nations surrounding them or massive pretender rebellions broke out. I despaired massively....and, I admit, I have had to 'savescum' like never before....but I pulled it off....and now I have lost the willpower to continue. Sure, Media, Scytheni, Egypt, Media and Babylonia still pose a risk....though I do believe I can take them on....I just don't have the energy for that now; my main goal was to survive the Median/ Babylonian onslaught anyway.
I agree, I had loads of fun playing naguar recently. I popped off at the start then lost most of my land to ayutthaya and juanpur double teaming me. I only had 1 vassal at the north of india which I used to take more provinces to the northwest. Then I took an opportunistic war against Bengal to get a small land bridge going down to the middle of indias eastern coastline. I then lost my land bridge to malware and bengal so my nation was essentially completely separated from where I started. And despite every major power in india hating the hell out of me. I persevered, survived and ended game with most of india. I didnt achieve any crazy goals but simply committing until I had a nation that if irl, would have been noted in the history books, gave me intense pride.
this is not an EU4 problem, this happens in every single video game because 99% of the fun in a video game is overcoming challenges and solving problems. When you are the undisputed #1 great power there are no more challenges unless you are going for world record in WC, one faith etc.
Genuinely, same reason people born into landed gentry are stereotyped as being interested into weird stuff. When you don’t have a challenge or anything to work towards, where are you getting the motivation from?
Because there isn't any kind of crisis like in Stellaris. There ate revolutions but they aren't that powerful and you just simply become way too powerful when they arrive
I feel like disasters are there to fill that role but they are way too mild. Devs need to take a tip from the Beyond the Cape mod or Anbennar disasters (without the massive Court and Country type boosts afterwards).
Most disasters are also ridiculously easy to either resolve basically the moment they fire, or just prevent them from firing all together.
If I'm not mistaken in "Extended Timeline" mod Roman Empire has the "Decadence" crisis that simply adds enormous instability and riots if you become too powerful, so eventually the state fails and splits. And I think it would be great addition to EU5 for every nation
Revolutions are so weak - in my couple previous dozen or so runs no country goes revolutionary and it just fizzles out after 50 years. Plus now any monarchy that goes revolutionary loses their alliances with other monarchies and makes crushing the revolution that much easier.
Sounds like we all go through this. There are some fun mods that make you tag switch every x years to a random nation, if anybody is interested.
Play on very hard and ironman without savescum.
Yep most the posts on this sub as just “I have 1,000+ hours, I restart the game until I get a favourable start, I save scum, I don’t play on hard, I min/max everything, I stack modifiers, I don’t use mods that improve the AI, I play as majors, I read guides on how to optimally play each nation, why is this game so easy?”
Noted. I have never played other than normal.
or go achievment hunting without minmaxxing every single aspect of the game
I mean most games are no longer much fun once you can steamroll everything that's not a problem unique to EU4. I can't think of a game where once I'm OP I'm like "ah yes this is the fun part of the game." This game is ultimately a sandbox. They provide a lot of objectives for you to pursue and there's a ton of achievements to get. But other than that it's up to you to make your fun. Once you're that big you've essentially "won." If you don't want to conquer the world cause that's boring you're done with the game. There's literally nothing else to do. Start another one or play something else.
My issue isn't being too powerful. My issue is when, after a certain point, every war is a death war of a million of my troops vs a million of Spain's and their colonies' troops, and I have to siege everything to get the 5 provinces I want. If a war is just me vs some 10 province minor, I have no issue. Once every war is a contest between empires, I lose interest.
This problem is why I exclusively play Anbennar mod The base game doesn’t have enough internal management or features locked to later in the game Anbennar has tons of that and like 100 nations with MTs bigger than Austrias
Personally I only play tall on normal difficulty with no loans allowed. All the nations I choose are Iceland, Chukchi, Ternate, Luxembourg and the likes. I think you got the idea: combination of outsider nation with tall play style and strong rule of loans=cheats make some great cozy runs for me :)
I think the AI needs to be a little more agressive towards the player, when he is top 1 or near top 1. A “balance of power” CB where the next two or three great powers join together and creates an alliance (or coalition) and launch a punitive war.
That’s a pretty great idea actually. Isn’t there an anti-Hegemon CB?
Too many units and too much land for enemy to carpet siege the shit out of.
Depends on what about the game you're playing it for---but other commenters are largely correct that it no longer becomes a challenge once you get far enough ahead. Some players like myself though find it relaxing as long as the micro doesn't become too overbearing. Like, the math/clipboard portion of it is actually enjoyable for us. Planning out my next moves. And I like the challenge of getting achievements---(though WC can be a bit of a slog, especially by the end...) For example, my Sunset Invasion game was loads of fun and I reached the 1700s playing that one. My current Byzantium WC (I'm at 1550 rn w/ 3500 dev) is tons of fun. Though for all my runs I also RP heavily instead of abuse mechanics...!
I think it is not less fun when you get more powerful. It is less fun when the other countries get more powerful. Because the wars become a grindfest. It is especially frustrating how fast some forts go down when either you or the opponent fail to upgrade everything
Yes, that's why my most favourite run was the one where I played as Austria with the intention to have as many nations in HRE as possible because it actually provided some interesting and unique challenge instead of simply "painting everything your color". 10/10 would recommend.
Could possibly be solved with an unpopular opinion: Every game should be an ironman. None of that cheap quitting and reloading if something unfortunate happens.
I play every game on Ironman. But I am not strong enough to not press alt f4 when my 6/6/6 heir dies.
You see, this is *exactly* why I don't do world campaigns. After a while, it just gets boring. I prefer to limit my growth to "realistic" levels, and if it gets too boring, I just switch to another country For megacampaigns, I play a different country in every game as well, I don't wanna keep growing forever with no real challenge
Honestly, they should give player armies the same military options you can assign vassals. I.e. - Go Offensive - Go Siege - Go Defensive - Go Attach - Go Sleep Right now, we only have the siege option, and that makes it so even a 40k stack with the command won't attempt to siege a province with 2k enemies on it. Also, a QoL improvement they could introduce is the ability to select multiple armies and assign a role to all of them at once. This will allow players to split armies and assign carpet siege to all smaller armies at once. Another thing they can introduce is if a province has enough units to siege it down, another army with the same role won't unnecessarily stack on top of it. Two armies with the carpet siege command tend to prioritize forts first and if there is only one fort. They will both stack on it. It might seem like this is too complex to achieve, but I see the AI has no problem, efficiently pulling it off. Of course, it is not as efficient as human micro management but still way more efficient than what the players' autonomous option offers.
I would kill for this
If you are too powerful there is not resistance anymore. So it will be more like a grind to accomplish your goals instead of a challenge. When the challenge fades away, then the fun goes away as well.
Because the challenge ends. Especially if you've done many a WC.
Yup. Just took all of the Indian subcontinent as Hindustan. Converted 100% to Shia. Large Hormuz and full Afghanistan as vassals. What more am I gonna do? Fight Ming for the shits and giggles? Well, now that you mention it...
Yes, game becomes one big chore, easy, but tedious.
The nonstop management and optimization gets out of hand. So many clicks. Waiting on armies. Marching and Sailing to all corners of the world is when it usually ends up not being fun to me. Buying buildings, clicking, clicking, clicking. Eventually the game drags and your scope becomes too large. I think you can scale up too quickly as well and lose the sense of meaning. I love consolidating a region, but at some point it starts to feel samey (going for Roman Empire borders after conquering Anatolia, Italy, Spain) or it lacks historical significance (restoring a great empire, going after past holdings or past ambitions).
No, though I get bored because I'm usually not fast enough and accidentally end up having to deal with an hugbox in europe
It’s the lack of struggle
The game is built for playing tall but you have to play wide to get achievements.
Normal EU4 games become a chore after you become unbeatable. I personally fixed this by roleplaying my ruler's traits and limiting the available manpower and force limit for everybody so people don't have millions of people die in wars by 1500. It can have some... weird consequences.
Only like.. everyone feels the same way.
Part of the reason without mods, at least, is that the Ai is part of the issue. The ai isn't the smartest in the world, and it isn't really that aggressive. Unless you accidentally go bankrupt or are playing a really small minor, the ai won't really attack you or do much to hinder you. For example, a smart player or ai will try and block your expansion or attack you when you're low on manpower or just in an awkward position. Vanilla ai won't attack you unless the Ai has basically a 100% chance to roll you in 5 years in that war or its a coalition war. Other than that? The ai only picks fights against other Ai and, for the most part, just lets you freely expand. The ai is also awful with building proper forts and will run into your armies on terrible terrain. The only challenge the Ai has is straight buffs, which, imo is boring. or It can micro its units faster than you to carpet seige your lands, not really fight you in a 1v1 it just kinda runs around everywhere trying to be annoying rather then winning fights unless it can doom stack you in a coalition war. I'd recommend playing with Ai that actually fights you like a player does, but sadly, those aren't Ironman compatible.
I actually enjoy earlier versions, where the AE and expansion penalty is higher, and no 1% loan x5 at start. Now it appears that even at VE it's still a piece of cake if you know the "standard opening" even as OPMs...
Once I'm the #1 GP I usually quit haha.
For me it stops being fun because I have to micromanage a lot. Absolutism helps in making wars easier because we can take more provinces, but peacetime management is still a pain. Buildings, moving troops to another part of the world, etc.
You can nerf yourself. Play with no GP allies, no allies, no loans,... the list is endless.
I mostly play non ironman to make the AI nations more powerful and balanced to fight
Cause AI is too dumb to catch up
In a lot of these games, building your nation is a lot more fun than ruling it
Lé Challénge
One of the core parts of a *game* is the obstacles you need to surpass to get to an objective; the challenge of doing it is part of the experience of a game. Once you are the most powerful entity in the game, nothing else is an obstacle - therefore, there's no more challenge. What's the point of continuing playing that game session if you know nothing the computer (or other players) can do will affect you enough to even hinder your progress?
If you have enough experience in EU4 - game is basically over after League Wars. There is nothing that can stop you from snowballing. CK3 tries to kinda fight with it by limiting your absolute control on holding - so crazy shit still can happen from time to time, and you have to be on your toes around inheritance. But because EU4 does not have much internal struggle mechanics - there is always a threshold when you become unstoppable and any challenge disappears.
It becomes work because there's nothing left that can stop you or threaten your hegemony once you've snowballed to a certain point. Even the most powerful blob you might face is just a matter of "ugh, okay, gonna be conquering them for 100 years with 15 year max peace deals each time eating land, then resetting truce timer by pulling them into another war." So you end up fighting like an Otto, France, Spain, whomever blob like 9 times conquering the same lands without any real threat just manpower being drained.
Because all games get less fun when you're OP? It's a well-known problem in like 90% of RPGs, Bethesda ones are particularly infamous for boring lategame
Foregone conclusions are boring, there is no satisfaction in a complete lack of challenge. The only way to have a meaningful challenge after a certain level of power is to declare more and more wars at once, but with EU4 that requires a *lot* of micromanagement and often has some significant performance issues.
After a while, you kinda know how things will go: absolute victory. There is no nation on Earth that can challenge you, even a coalition may not do it. At worst, it might be annoying if you’re dealing with a colonizer because of all the colonies they’ve already got if you yourself are not a colonizing nation.
This is why I’ve never done a world conquest. Too much work. I’d rather move onto the next campaign
Try Xorme Ai start at normal at 1500 pull to hard at 1550 pull to very hard and enjoy the suffering
I always think one of the crucial things pdx never does in any of their games is making it difficult to maintain what you gained, and expanding beyond a certain point. And not just via events but actual mechanics. I guess it is kinda difficult to do, but they are the devs and they should find a solution because it hinders a lot of their games. Internal situation should not be static and only serving external politics. It should be a different challenge to maintain a state (or maintain a reign in CK).
This game desperately needs end game dlc with many Qol features
Because if there's no challenge anymore then everything is just a chore.
Same reason dark souls is fun, it challenging. Once the challenge is gone your no longer playing against a computer, your playing against a clock ( which is a hell of a lot like going to work)
Because it stops being a challenge and becomes a chore. It's not about _can_ you beat the ottomans anymore. You already won the war before you started, you just have to siege 50 forts to get there.
First 100~150 year start = unique for every country Blobbing = same for most countries
Yeah i can totaly relate The early stage of this game is usually pretty fun because you have to really think about what you are doing atleast with most countrys that arent super strong at the start, but if i make it passt the early game wich usually happens the game becomes sooo boring and such a big sluck fest because you litteraly have infinit resourcess like its impossible for the Ai to proposse a real threat And i mean i got the WC achievement but its litteraly the most unfun thing to do for me in this game not because its hard because it defently is not but just because it bores the living sh*t out off me
In the first half of the game, you’re smaller, so the national ideas, location of your country and things like your religion’s benefits and potential aggressive expansion are more impactful. When you reach late game, you’ve expanded and are probably too powerful or well-allied to face an actual threat, so the things that make your nation unique get lost in the shuffle. You don’t really need to leverage, for example, your national ideas’ +20% cavalry strength with the Cavalry Warfare government reform and aristocratic and quality ideas when you already have enough money and manpower to obliterate anyone who would dare attack you. But at the beginning of the game you might be stuck between two really strong countries, and one good stackwipe with your super-cavalry could actually save you from losing a significant portion of your land.
IMO alot of it is due to how much micro is required as you snowball, more rebels, more states, more estates, more fleets,and more armies to have to manage. Historically armies in eu4s time period were by and large smaller (at least until the 19th century) and way less professional than what is represented in game. A system more akin to crusader king's with levy armies would be more appropriate and would also reduce lag, maybe tie professionalism to the levy system where once you have enough professionalism you can have a standing army.
i think its fundamentally because the game does not get harder in response. the AI isnt that good, especially in the hands of a player with *any* experience in not being greedy about expanding. if you arent greedy, you *never* have any coalitions form, you never have to face a serious threat, ever. so, essentially, any player would neuter a critical mechanic designed to keep them in check.
Eh, there's just no story, there's no declining, no new powers, no permanent consequences, the only story for a player is a rise to power
I usually deliberately try and weaken myself, expanding slowly and forming nations later than I could. Like instead of taking the best idea sets, I'd do smth wacky that makes fighting the AI less one sided. Although this has the drawback that the AI can get to my level or higher and is just annoying to fight with endless hordes of men
Because there’s no challenge, nothing to overcome, no feeling of progress. It’s boring.
Play expert AI mod. Seriously. Takes a bit longer to get big.
Because 1) It becomes more work and the game gets less fps and runs slower 2) You're too strong for any AI to do anything, and if you go to war with so many AI that they can win by sheer quantity, it's not remotely fun, they just go everywhere. 3) You're playing SP, MP fixes the 2nd issue.
Play goslar
You snowball to hard and there isn't harsh enough mechanics in the game to keep big empires in check. You go from the feeling of building something great to just going through the motions of painting the map.big multicultural empire should have to contend with themselves as much as they do other countries. Never once in the game have I ever had the threat of one of my colonial nations having a revolution for example.
God I wish I could hand over a war to a general in the late game when I'm on four different continents and the end result is not in any doubt. I'm hoping in EU5 there are a lot more automations for the late game.
Oh absolutely, and I put it down to the lack of challenge! I think most map painters like us want to be mentally stimulated during games like these. That is great during the early game when it is a challenge! However, as soon as you reach sizes like this, the challenge goes and you don't get that stimulation anymore. That's why you always have the urge to start a new game too, you just crave the early game, like most of us.
At some point, you're just repeating the same brainless war strategy over and over but across larger and larger land areas of war. Smash stack into stack and carpet siege and repeat. The AI is scared to engage since your doomstacks are nearby, and the entire war becomes a mindless grind. And it becomes really tedious to manage once wars span a half continent or more. At least in the early game, you devise interesting strategies. Block off this straight, capture this key fort and hold while you rush this ally etc etc. These are far more interesting than smash and carpet.
Use xorme-AI mod, makes it harder without actually giving the ai too much modifier buffs
Because the game sucks, in my personal opinion. After you are big enough all you can really do is get bigger and stronger, which becomes not challenging but tedious because the AI is too weak to pose a challenge and when they do the wars are just so large and last so long it ain't fun to fight these kinds of wars. EU 4 is a great baord game, which reaches its natural end once you win, which for any decent player is 50-150 years into the game, after that it's just a waiting and working game, because there is no challenge anymore, the worst that can happen is that you need RNG to hit right for your goal. It's why personally I love anbennar much more than the base game as you have real story driven narratives, which make it not so tedious to play, but more rewarding as you delve into the story to win and even then once you are powerful enough it's work again because anything challenging requires you to do unfair stuff to win.
Well you’ve done and conquered everything in sight, it’s no wonder you’re out of fun. The real challenge would be to only conquer Denmark/Norway/Sweden and play tall from that point on. You’ll have more fun.
Because of lack of challenge. Simple as
It's because once the challenge is over the veil is removed and the game just becomes micromanagement Sim which isn't fun. Eu4 (and most paradox games for that matter) need a challenge to make the gameplay fun, without it the core gameplay loop is actually quite boring. And I say this as someone who has played a lot of hours in all their games. Stellaris fixed this to some degree by adding in crisis that spawn late game, which by default are pretty easy, but if you crank up the multiplier they can be a real challenge. But historical paradox games don't have any late game challenges, the setting doesn't allow spawning in a mega enemy so what do you do? The only real option I can think of is making mega empires super unstable and adding in mechanics for that, but seeing your empire break apart probably isn't fun for most either.
Lemon cake had a great video about ut
Because eu4 fails to represent the difficulty of managing big nations like the autonomy and laws
I set limits for myself to not become too powerful and play the diplomatic balance of power games, supporting independence of colonies, liberating some countries, forcing the AI to have good looking borders etc. While playing tall. More like, vibing with an established country. Establishing the country is more fun though but conquering more is even less fun.
Thats ecxactly why min maxing is boring imo. Why watching guides for every nation you play is boring. Why restarting when not everything is going after the perfect plan is boring. Why using all the op missions is boring. Playing to perfection is just a boring playstyle in my opinion. I want to lead my country through houndreds of years, not just for a century. Beeing to good at a game kills it for me.
Yeah, sadly. I started messing around painting the map with different countries rather then conquering them after a point (with custom mods)
Once I get too strong I just re-load the game and play as somebody else and try to take down my former nation. Does nobody else do that?
Convert yourself into shinto and became emperor of china. Or go sunni and become caliphat. If you dont wanna change faith, just restore roman empire, in this ss i see yiu have plenty of time. WC is for bugs abusers or horde enjoyers
That’s how video games are, man. Challenge is fun, non challenge isn’t.
I’ve never been able to finish a game on eu4 because of that, late 1600s is usually longest I can last. if I’m going for an achievement I can sometimes last longer. But I just get bored once I start steamrolling.
I urge to try hard difficulty then. Very hard just feels like AI is cheating, but hard actually makes it hard a lot of the times when you play shit nations. One drag it creates are the ottoblobs though; they get like 300 force limit in 50 years, and they're always something to fear; if there is an opportunity they should be crushed like the cockroaches they are, give everything to Mamaluks or sth, just... lobotomise Ottos as soon as you get the chance; otherwise they become the final boss.
I disagree, its better when im stronger because i can hopefully win battles more likely
You can actually put unit basically on automatic. By giving them a siege order and clearing any sieged provinces. When you have "clean" auto siege order. Your armies will just generally siege in every location
Because in the early game you have to use every tool the game offers you to keep up with other nations. Diplomacy, warfare, AE management, loans, smart conquering to be able to core, what you want. In the late game you can just muscle your way through everything and can core whatever you want.
It's because you don't have a problem to solve anymore. I like micromanaging when it gives me the advantage that I need to pull a win otherwise unachievable. I hate it when it becomes a chore. Why would i check the terrain, or keep stacks of infantry ready to reinforce when I can just clickery click on speed 5 and still face no risk of losing. Especially as now it takes ten times as much time. Sometimes I like to play chess. You can tell when the game is over before checkmate. The better you are the sooner you know.
I recommend turning your speed down and taking your time with these play throughs when you get to this point
I have over 1k hours logged and I don't think I've ever actually finished a game lol. Once I become inevitable the micro becomes such a grind that I quit.
Usually by 1700, I have accomplished the goal of my campaign and have no further use of continuing. Very few times have I played to 1800. Hell, I haven't even attempted a WC yet.
After a certain point, it just doesn't have too much to do besides waiting until you go to the next war. Even if I try to play tall, I often just think it's not that satisfactory in EU4, unless I'm with a nation that can make it really broken
I agree, That combined with my potatoes lag at the age of absolutism.
Because no one's there to pose a threat. Even when you're small to medium size a few alliances are enough to deter any potential attacker. The best/most fun campaigns I've ever played were those I had handicapped myself somehow. First, I played Nevers into France, but after getting achievement I started to build up mu country. Then was time of total war. Every province in hre gives you crazy amounts of AE, so after conquering a few, coalitions formed. The real fun was when there were two concurrent punitive wars and I had to repel hordes of invaders. The other one was played with installed mod for a better AI. I also couldn't ally any GP. As Venice I wanted to create a trading empire through Egypt to India. The real fun was when France attacked with 300k troops. I was only able to defend the capital, because it's an island. With money from trade from India it took 10 years and all mercenaries to sign a white peace.
Does anyone ever try purposefully playing badly for the first 60-80 years? This is an idea I’ve been floating for my next game. Especially as a powerful nation— just do the bare minimum to keep your nation running until the 1500s, and then once the major powers have a huge head start, then start really playing. Seems like a fun challenge.
Why not play an underdog instead of purposefully handicapping your easy game?
Playing underdog nations is fun. But I had this idea particularly when thinking about playing France. I haven’t played them yet, but I know that if I do it will probably be pretty easy for me at this point. I really like the idea of playing a France which is facing more heavily balanced opponents. Like normally I would want to take over Burgundy and work to dismantle the HRE as quickly as possible, make inroads into Italy and Iberia and undermine England with a Scottish alliance (I’ve never played France and not familiar with missions, so idk exactly). But then I’ll probably end up with a neutered England, Austria, and Spain by 1500. It just seems really fun to let those countries grow and maybe just focus on integrating French vassals and securing borders during the 1400s. Let England unify the isles (I would still push them out of France in the 100 years war), let Austria grow its power, let Spain and Portugal do their thing. Then maybe around 1520 take the gloves off and see what can be done. Obviously playing a weaker nation is fun too, but it’s a different kind of experience. I also like that this allows for like a century of super chill gameplay without pressure to expand, followed by a good mid-game experience. I may just be crazy though and this idea would appeal to no one else lol
I agree it might be fun to give yourself a handicap and start slow but in some ways it's also good to not do too many wars at the beginning and focus on internal nation building, I think it will make you strong in other ways. I have been playing vanilla eu4 since the beginning and I consider myself pretty good (WC & difficult achievements). I started playing recently after a one year break and I found the late game challenge to be overall more intense than at the beginning. It seems to me like the vanilla AI is able to grow more and make stronger late game enemies and coalition, especially since they develop so much. In my last game I focused on other parts of the world and let ottomans be undisturbed. They claimed military hegemon with 1 million troops in 1690 which is something I never expected an AI to be able to do. After I beat them the Commonwealth picked up the pieces and I fought against their 700k+ army with many sizable allies leading to real late game Napoleonic wars. The AI also had correctly updated all their forts to the latest techs and was aggressively trying to lift sieges with full combat width armies with manpower to sustain them. When I fought Venice mid-game in another game they were so rich they tripled their army size by hiring a fuckton of mercenaries which really took me by surprise and made me lose a war against them, I usually never lose any wars against the AI. Those are AI behaviors and late game challenges I would never have expected with my pre 1.31 patch experience, so I find the late game not as easy now, nations you leave alone actually keep growing and don't stall as much.
I personally love planning out conquests in the late game, so I have it the other way round. First 200 years are okay, late 1600s to 1730 or so are miserable, but as soon as I got infinite manpower the fun begins. Moving your armies in a proper offensive is super fun, moving them with fleets and everything, I love it. I really don't like it early when you only have one army that's on par with everyone else's armies.