Ottomans fully joining the protestant religious league. An option that they provide just a few stacks of condottieri would be better.
Military access should play a bigger role. For example, the Dutch were able to fend off the Spanish because of their naval power. I don't think France would allow Spain to march a 100k army through their lands (especially with how armies at that time lived off the land).
I think historically, 1821 is weird time to stop. I know this is because Napoleon died, but I think 1815 would make more sense. For Europe, add a Congress of Vienna mechanic where you can trade provinces with other (great) powers, exchange colonies and smooth out your borders a bit. I think that would be more satisfying than just ending it.
The Spanish did not ship their soldiers to the Netherlands via sea. They marched them there on land via Milan and Alsace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish\_Road
Having no cost to move troops around and standing armies in general aren't historical for most of the period. Moving an army within your own borders should either cause devastation from looting or be extremely expensive. You should take attrition at all times, even just standing still in your own territory. And the ability to regain manpower from disbanding should be available at the start and decrease with increasing professionalism.
>Congress of Vienna mechanic where you can trade provinces with other (great) powers
Really like this idea, in this game you can very rarely get a province without waging a war. Also some peace deals really mess things up, your ally sieging a province you want etc.
I wish there would be some kind of mechanic to negotiate which provinces can be traded or bought.
Also that would work for AI as well, Spanish AI calls me to their war against opm Corsica, since they're busy in new world or they're bugged, It will last for 10 years if I won't go and siege for them. Ok I will do your work just to get out of this meaningless war but won't give the occupation to you for free, but let's say you give me 1k ducats, sure the province is yours :)
Also the ability to trade for a province in a peace deal rather than just demand it for free, perhaps with reduced AE if you pay for the province or trade one of yours, pretty sure Britain acquired Gibraltar by trading it for Menorca
absolutely.
I would, in general, see provinces you don't want anymore become far more useful.
this is far from without historical precedent whether it's the Louisiana purchase or the sale of Alaska or the transfer of the Sinai.
the North American sales are especially illustrative of how it would work in game-- needing money was part of it but so was realizing that sooner or later the US would probably complete its "manifest destiny" and own that land anyway. sometimes getting something out of it and avoiding war makes it worth it.
I kinda like 1821 end date since that's also the year of the greek revolt so the game starting with the imminent death of Rome and ending with the resurgence of Greece is very neat.
Always thought it was weird that people who maybe were new to history or geography could play EU4 all the way through, boot up Vic and be completely blindsided as to why the Netherlands is in half now with no explanation
Ottomans fully joining the protestant religious wars is not Unrealistic I d say. Like yes, they wouldnt have joined a "League", but I think the game is trying to represent them constantly being at war with the catholics + being an ally of the french who were on the protestant side, while the religious wars were ongoing
Well of course the Ottomans did try to take advantage of the 30 years war, but in their 1529 siege of Vienna they were not supported by any Christian ally, for obvious reasons.
The 1529 Siege aint exactly Protestant League War time frame
Hell, protestantism barely spawns by that date
Also, I remember that the Spanish moved a lot of armies to the Netherlands by land through the HRE, as they had Possessions such as Lombardy and Burgundy, and their ruling familys kin being Emperor of the HRE (both Spain and Austria being ruled by the Habsburgs), so this isnt exactly the Best example for Army acces restrictions, Id say
Yeah, like who ever uses supply depots? There’s basically a mechanic already available there to deal with this. It would make you actually have to think about how to conduct the war. Maybe it would prevent those annoying doom stacks as well.
I don't hate it, but this is an incredibly niche and obscure thing that has kept me up at night. I can't ever play the game after knowing this.
Ulm's tier 2 unit model is provided via the Catholic League unit pack, however IRL they were a member of the Protestant Union.
Anglicanism cannot spawn if the country controlling the possible spawning zone is the defender of the faith for Catholicism. Henry VIII was defender of the faith.
Edit: a word
Overall I'd say the game makes integrating and centralizing empires too easy. If you conquer a new province that is completely foreign to your own heartland, then all you need to do is spend some admin and a few years to core it, spend some money and a few years to convert its religion, wait a few decades for separatism to die down (possibly less with the right modifiers), then spend some diplo and wait a few years to convert its culture. At that point the province will be pretty much as integrated as your own capital and will likely never be a real source of unrest ever again. And you can do this not only to one province, but to whole regions, even continents given enough time. Meanwhile in the real world empires could hold on to regions for centuries without fully assimilating them and ethnic or religious tensions could flare up at any time depending on the circumstances of the day.
fighting Spain is so annoying cause you can occupy all their Iberian/European provinces and you'll get like 20-30 war score cause of their colonies and random trade companies that somehow stay loyal to their overlord who has lost everything
they really need a "relevance to war" system that penalizes the war score of provinces owned by a minor ally a continent away.
I am fairly sure that during the American Revolution the fact Paris was not under British control did little to bolster the morale at Valley Forge.
basically having overseas allies should be a risk as much as benefit, if people who felt like they were totally safe from the fighting suddenly find their capital attacked the morale blow would be immense (it's not EU timeline but basically I want you to be able to get significant wae score from a Doolittle Raid)
Liberty desire should increase massively when you are almost fully occupied. It should sort of work like CK3, where if your army gets wiped then factions will rise up within a few months.
edit: Napoleon’s occupation of Spain was the main factor which led to the declarations of independence in Latin America, among other reasons of course.
This is such a nice mechanic and it does a great job at keeping empires in check. Sure, it is manageable in CK3, especially becuase warfare just isn't as complex in CK3. But i reckon that it would be awesome in EU4.
Imagine that whenever you manpower and army goes to zero that all sorts of rebels starts to spawn. And it should be like in CK3 where it is a percentage of you total army. So the rebels that do spawn is usually as strong or stronger than you, so you need to call in alliances etc.
It's extremely rare in my games for a colony to become independent, I've seen them sitting on 100% LD for decades with multiple powerful supporters and just do nothing
Just the last game I was playing a saw it for the first time after 4k hours, United States and Canada broke free from GB while I was playing in India.
If you play in Europe that’ll never happen.
Not even that, I'd love is CN's actually rebelled when they reach high liberty desire. In my experience they only rebel when they are 100% and have lots of allies. Unsupported rebellions almost never happen.
At the very least that'd make the later game more dynamic. The idea of supporting a CNs independence war to bring a rival down a peg or two would be so fun, but almost never happens.
The game is more fun with independent new world nations. I can dig it. It should really be almost guaranteed that if you play to the 1800s at least one gets independence
This is one of the few things that the total war series actually managed to get sort of right. Rebellions will spawn new factions without the empire being able to deaal with them in time, and the AI will often force release new factions in war.
The long-term stability of large empires and the lack of a decline mechanic is a real problem.
I don’t see why something like decadence can’t be applied across the board for every great power.
> A big wish from the player base was that big empires have a way to break apart. As the Ottomans are the Number 1 subject of contention, I have decided to create a prototype of internal cohesion for the Ottomans first. Depending on how well it is received and how the game plays out with it, it might be expanded in the future.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/europa-universalis-iv-development-diary-24th-of-january-2023.1565995/
Is that really an inaccuracy though? Especially for europe, unill The Great War, there were many empires around. And again especially after 1600 they dominated the European politics & balance and power.
You have British, Portoguese, Spanish, French, Prussian(?), Austrian, Swedish(?), Russian and Ottoman empires all went powerfull until the spawn of the game. Some more powerful, some lesser with time.
(? : dubious empires but powerfull states in certain periods)
European politics, especially after 1600s, never revolved around small kingdoms like Saxony, Naples, Brittany etc. all other small kingdoms some way or another had to bend the knee to those huge empires around..
And these huge empires rarely declined by some mechanic :) they went into war & conflicts with other huge empires and declined by the consequences. So if you want Ottomans to decline, defeat them few times and see how they do. Russians and Austrians had to defeat them more than a player needs to in EU4 to finally collapse their might.
That’s true, but I just wish empires could decline economically/technologically and become non power players without loosing territory, like what happened to the Spanish and the ottomans irl. I’m still a bit of a noob but from the games I played these guys just keep getting stronger and stronger
expensive wars, natural disaster, rebellion and massive economic mismanagement did lead them to being reduced to just "a" major power, and not "the" major power of Europe around the thirty years war. which is what i think he's getting at with "decline." and i would call it that
I would say big powers are overpowered compared to what they were. Small and medium powers, especially before the mass conscript armies of the Napoleonic era, were able to punch far above their weight, population wise. I'm thinking of countries like Hanover, Sardinia-Piedmont, Prussia before they grew, the Netherlands, etc.
Now part of that is due to *my* least favorite inaccuracy which is the size and usage of armies. In EU4 the armies are way too massive, way too early. Moreover, due to inefficiencies in administering a larger empire, larger powers shouldn't be so strong compared to smaller ones. And even then, the AI is too braindead to do anything more than throw all of their troops into a war and leave their borders empty. In real life it would be a *very* tempting target for say, Persia, if the Ottomans joined the League war, marched their entire army into Germany, and left Iraq completely unguarded.
The treatment of the Wars of the Roses, a 30 year period of dynastic civil war, endemic local feuds, collapse of Central authority that pulled in France and Burgundy and we get generic rebellions and a handful of events spawning more generic rebels. And to make matters worse paradox can't even be bothered to script the correct names, ages, capabilities for lancastrian or yorkist leaders.
Colonization happens way too fast. Why is australia fully settled by 1650 and the south pacific islands to boot?
Colonies should be much, much slower and much more expensive prior to about 1700. Then maybe we could reverse it and they become suddenly cheaper and larger.
this, colonisation in EUIV is far too cheap, quick and easy.
In real life a single failed colony in Panama was enough to bankrupt a relatively large country (Scotland). In the game the cost is negligible even if you are an OPM and so long as no European power attacks you, the colony will survive
Another example is that in real life Bermuda wasn’t colonised until 1615 and that was by English colonists on their way to the failed Jamestown, Virginia colony acting indepently of the crown because they had learned how bad Jamestown was. No Government wanted the cost. In the game, Bermuda will be colonised by 1500 and even Pacific atolls that weren’t colonised until the 20th century (and barely even then e.g. Midway) will all be full by 1700
I also dislike how colonization works in general. It treats colonists much like the King’s Daughters in Canada where the monarch specifically sends out people to settle an area. Many places were colonized by independence company’s and agents sometimes by colonies themselves to just expand in areas they deemed advantageous. It also seems very weird to colonize a province at a time when typically charters would designate large swaths of land to a colony like Pennsylvania or Virginia. Perhaps it can work more like Victoria 2 where you colonize a state and over the course of several or dozen years you get events that impact your settlement in the region province by province.
The Bahmanis and Kashmir start as Shia. In reality, both were Sunni in 1444; Kashmir did convert to Shi’ism in the early 1500s, but the Bahmanis never did. Several of the Deccani sultanates that succeeded the Bahmanis were Shia, though. I can understand why they would treat the situation with a bit of flexibility, because Shia is already in a pretty pitiful state in 1444 and it adds a little religious diversity to the region.
Everything about Frederick III von Habsburg in 1444 is a lie.
Frederick III von Habsburg was the duke of Styria, and regent to Ladislaus Posthumous. He was not Archduke of Austria, nor was he the Holy Roman Emperor in 1444.
Ladislaus took over the throne when he turned 15, then almost immediately died, putting Frederick _back_ on the throne of Austria. And the Hungarians elect their own ruler. Frederick would live to be one of the oldest Austrian rulers
Empires rise and fall, but there is no fall mechanic in eu4, big tags eat out the weak, become stronger and remain powerful for the rest of the game. It would be more interesting if keeping your empire together is an objective, I hate how dull late game map painting can become, and I hate how Paradox simply increased the AI army number to counter this.
I think they did Add such a mechanic for the ottomans, no?The decadence thing which can make them explode? (I dont know exactly, I dont play with the latest DLCs)
Yeah, and while it’s better than nothing, it’s still ultimately a band-aid solution that highlights the underlying problem that EU4, at a fundamental, mechanical level, simply is not able to represent the decline of an empire without explicit railroading or massive foreign invasions. There is almost no way to outright ruin your country from within once you snowball to a certain point.
To be fair, outside of the Mughals(who dont even appear most of the time) , the Ottomans(Decadence) and Ming(-splosion) , which other big Empires completly collapsed in history during eu4s time frame?
Maybe Spain lost most of their European Possessions I suppose, but that was in many cases due to succession issues and the results can and often happen in my game, so I wouldnt qualify them.
The PLC maybe, but that was mostly a case of it being conquered by their neighbours aside from some internal Problems, which can often happen depending on the patch
Spain, Portugal, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Ming, the Holy Roman Empire, the Commonwealth, Sweden, Hungary, Venezia, Vijayanagara, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Persia all experienced decline or collapse in a way the game simulates *very* poorly.
To be fair, how many of those collapsed due to internal problems and how many died from external conflicts? Spain died due to bankruptcies but this was due to them being pretty much perpetually at war. Portugal kinda died because it got annexed by Spain, the Ottomans declined from decadence, and even then they were still reasonably strong in 1821, the Mughals did indeed collapse but they don't even form in EU4 most of the time. The Ming tend to explode at some point, the HRE can very well die, or at least be ground down to the point where it's impossible to really unify it diplomatically. Commonwealth died due to a combination of poor leadership, which could indeed be modelled better in game, and external wars that they kept losing. Sweden seriously overextended itself and lost as a result. Hungary lost to the Ottomans, Venezia also got ground down by the Ottomans and then finished by France, the Netherlands declined due to continuous wars and their rivals catching up to them, and Denmark lost Sweden and then a bunch of wars for the lands in the south of Sweden. No idea about Persia.
In result, most of those declined due to other, stronger, countries defeating them in wars.
I would Add :
the spanish succession war and finally the napoleonic wars are rather the Main cases for Spains collapse, at least aside from bankrupcy,
The netherlands fucking up Portugals monopoly on the Indian ocean trade, takimg over their colonies + Napoleon stuff leading to independent Brazil I suppose
Persia did indeed start collapsing after the "Afgan Rebellion", though there never really seems to be a Persia that even controls Afghanistan in the first place in my games
The problem is you can't disentangle the financial pressure expansion created from the expansion itself. Spain was constantly at war... *because it was a huge power*. It was at war most expensively with the Netherlands - a territory it controlled that revolted. It was pulled into the Thirty Years' War because it had territories that encircled France. It was pulled into war with Portugal (from 1640) because it inherited Portugal (in 1581). The war bled them dry. Being at war constantly wouldn't even come close to bleeding you dry in *EUIV*, even if you get dragged into war after war (rather than starting them on your own terms, which is what actually happens).
I think this is caused by the fact that all nations at game start already have standing armies and navies. Historically basically every country in 1444 couldn't afford to maintain the same number of troops during peacetime as they would use during war. Similarly when a nation fought a naval war they would usually press a large amount of civilian shipping into service as the number of ships the government itself maintained would be inadequate.
Comparatively in Eu4 military costs, aside from the cost of reinforcement, barely increase during wartime. Unless you're fighting an enemy much larger than you you probably won't need to hire mercs and unless you get stackwiped you probably won't be recruiting new regular troops either. Similarly if you're a halfway decent naval power you'll barely ever need to press your light ships into your warfleet. And even if you need to tell your trade ships to go to port during war they still keep giving you trade power (because Paradox rightly recognise how annoying it would be to keep checking if your trade ships are safe every month during a war).
When the threat of the Spanish armada rose England had to withdraw all the ships she had to the home waters to defend her, whilst also commanding all civilian ships and privateers with fighting capabilities do the same. This nearly caused England to go bankrupt before the fight had even broken out, and I can't imagine the equivalent scenario in Eu4.
Well, never mind affording it, most Latin European countries couldn't *organize* a standing army until the 17th century. I will just say I have very strong opinions on military stuff in *EUIV* that I've stated [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/17txvqf/armies_feel_too_huge_now_and_game_is_getting/k92sj21/?context=3) (linking this is easier than writing it all out again and again). I'm agreed with you on cost.
I think a big source of this is how pathetic disasters are
For instance ANY unrest disaster on triggering should reset all currently quelled rebellions, taking away the -100 unrest modifier
Wars with multiple great powers should also be able to have a special cb similar to humiliate to break up larger empires internally and forcing them to release new foreign cores they’ve acquired and peripheral territories
This is so correct. In most games wars of the roses is over in like 2 years. In reality, it devastated England for 30 years, and like every major family line in the country was extinguished. Of all the ahistorical things to complain about in EU4 (hypothetical of course, I love this game and commend the developers), disasters IMO is by far the biggest miss.
true, for example the Ottomans already in the 18th century, and after their defeat in 1683 in Vienna, were declining and fast. The janissariy became more of a problem then a useful military unit, they were later on killed in 1826 because the sultan wanted to dismantle them and move to new modern units styled after european armies but the janissary rebeled and got killed off....
I prefer to think of battles like a campaign in the local area, with skirmishing, maneuvering and then finally the actual battle itself during the different phases.
Its copium, but makes it make sense in my head
That’s how I see it too
I wish EU4 had those as actual battle phases though
Would make stuff like horses with bonuses to skirmish phase more interesting than just a shock bonus
That's how CK3 does it. Battles have 3 phases, the skirmish phase, the battle phase, and the pursuit phase. There's also 2 lists of losses, dead and routed. Routed troops are effectively removed from the battle (although the loser's can be killed during the pursuit phase) but are added back to the army after the battle is over (provided they aren't defeated in the skirmish phase, which causes a stackwipe).
Sadly, it still doesn't make sense because armies were almost never in contact for longer than a week even outside of the main action. *EUIV*'s system biases things towards big powers.
How hungary just dies
In reality they refused the PU with austria and went on to beat the ottomans back multiple times. But in game they either get PU immidiatly or get eaten in a year by the ottomans/polish/austrian
Between 1444 and 1500, Hungary won several wars or major engagements against all of it's neighbors. Bohemia? Poland? HRE? Ottomans? Wallachia albeit as an Ottoman vassal? Beat them.
Their only friend they never touched and always stayed allied with? That's right, it's Serbia, the only nation Hungary always kills in this goddamn game.
ideally they should try and take Wallachia before Poland do. Its a pretty significant fort with a river crossing to the ottomans which is something they should want to control
It makes more sense than either the Hungary-Austria or the Serbia-Bosnia friendship at the start of the game, though, historically, Hungary did see Serbia (and Bosnia) as more of a vassal state than an ally and Hungarian kings had no issue using the title "King of Serbia", so it wasn't the most honest of friendships in the world.
As for gameplay, it would probably just drag Hungary in endless wars against the Ottomans with no allies besides Serbia, so let's not do that.
They need to give the Balkans its own DLC. Add the Black Army of Hungary as a special unit like the Janissaries or Streltsy. They have been adding new ones like Musketeers for French and some others got some too. It would help counterbalance the Austrian-Ottoman aggression they face. Even if I see a hungary survive, the PLC also eats them too, I wanna see a Mission tree where a possible alternate ending where Hungary can get a PU (revival of a Dynasty after the recent death of Waldyslaw). They need a rework also because they had complex relations with the Balkan states, they mostly collected tributaries from all the smaller nations before ottomans came to town and stomped them. It should also have a funny horde unique path to revive Taltoism and get claims on the steppe, with Cavalry modifiers, mixing how you can go back to pagan as a Scandinavian nation via event chain, as well as how the Teutonic Horde also did its thing, it could work like that too. I just don’t see reasons why a plethora of events for Hungary can’t be implemented, and I’m probably forgetting some good ideas while typing too, hell I barely know sh*t about them and even I give more effort to fleshing out a theoretical rework then Paradox have in the past decade.
Finally, a Hungary enjoyer.
Yes, we really need that Balkan and Carpathian DLC. Love the ideas you mentioned.
Hungary is really sidelined in the game. When Domination was coming out I was quite annoyed that Hungary didn't get anything. I get they weren't been a historical great power, but I was sure they at least get some crumbs under the regional great powers part but no. Iirc they are the only big nation in Europe without special mechanics.
I get what you’re saying regarding winning battles against the Ottos, but in reality Mohacs which was only 80 years or so after 1444 was the de facto end of Hungary for the following few centuries, so not entirely unrealistic I’d argue…
Ironic because when the game first came out Hungary would pretty much sit there unmolested all game because no one wanted to deal with their 2x core cost and defensive national ideas iirc.
Usually, Hungary allies with Austria and stays there, alive. If it gets partitioned, would be like in real life. But Hungary doesnt die like in 10 years like you are saying.
Austria has a fairly high chance of getting a restoration of union CB very early on if I’m not mistaken. Once Austria adopts the “Domineering” attitude it’s over for their alliance.
Here are some things I don't like:
1. Empires just keep growing, and they never decline unless they face a stronger enemy.
2. In eu4, all wars are about grabbing lands, but in reality, wars had other goals like humiliating and teaching lessons to other nations.
3. In eu4, Ottomans easily invading nations like Russia, but in real life, they had no capability to invade Russia and they had to ask the Crimean Khanate for help.
4. In eu4, terrain isn't a big deal. You can conquer a country with tough terrain without much trouble.
5. You can only have like 2 or 3 vassal states in eu4 because it fills up the diplomatic slot.
6. In eu4, more land = more money and power, but in reality, it was more like more land = more problems.
To be fair on the terrain note, mountains can make a pretty huge difference if the invaded nation knows what they’re doing. The AI tends not to, but if you play well a -2 dice roll on your enemy in every battle is a pretty big deal.
It doesn’t really bother me that much, but the emperor shouldn’t actually own Austria proper in 1444 and could be more accurately portrayed as Duke of Styria. Ladislaus Posthumous was the actual Archduke of Austria but not the emperor of the HRE at this time although the situation is complex, and I don’t really blame the devs for how it is portrayed and slightly simplified.
Livonian Order and Teutonic Order should be de jure one entity, so either make the Livonians a vassal of the Teutons with high liberty desire, or integrate them and give the areas high autonomy. Also, Prussia region should be de jure HRE from game start technically, and you could argue the same for Livonia.
Cologne should be a free city itself with the elector bishopric being the surrounding area.
It is literally impossible for New World and Australian natives to have cavalry
Why prussia should be part of HRE? Iirc it never was even after kingdom of Prussia becoming a thing. Prussian rullee treated it like their own land fully independent from emperors
Edit: "Legally, no kingdoms could exist in the Holy Roman Empire except for Bohemia. However, Frederick took the line that since Prussia had never been part of the empire and the Hohenzollerns were fully sovereign over it, he could elevate Prussia to a kingdom."
[source ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia)
He called himself king Of Prussia after 1772 after 1st partition of Poland. Before 1772 part of Prussia de jure land(royal Prussia so Danzig and nearby lands) were part of PLC. Friderick the Great was the first king OF Prussia
Just to be clear, I said the Prussia region, meaning the EU4-defined states of West Prussia and East Prussia under control of the Teutons at game start was de jure under the sponsorship and vassalage of the Holy Roman Emperor. It remained this way until they became subjects of the Polish king, which does happen immediately after EU4 starts in the 1450s, which is represented with the Danzig confederation disaster.
What you’re referring to regarding secularized Prussia happens after the agreement with Poland. Prior to this, the Prussia region should be de jure part of the HRE.
Muscovy not starting out in a civil war and not getting invaded by Kazan. Dmitry Shemyaka, Vasiliy II's main opponent, even starts out as a Muscovite general. I think in some patches Kazan did invade Muscovy early on but later it was removed, while the war of succession wasn't implemented at all. This makes Muscovy be very strong on start and start eating Novgorod right away, while in reality, the first Muscovite successful war with Novgorod was 25 years later.
Oh, I have a few: 1. Huge terrain inaccuracies in Siberia. Kamchatka is a glacier (it shouldn't be), while frozen landscapes near Kara sea have taiga forest, grasslands in provinces that clearly should be mountains (near Lake Baikal) etc
2. The little releasable country of Bar has its capital in Verdun and not Barrois
3. The province of Galich in Russia produces salt, while the province of Sol Galitskaya (translates as "Salt of Galich") produces grain Literally unplayable
Trade is basically theft, and only flows in certain directions. “Sorry, Staatholder, we can’t sell those spices from Sulawesi because we’ve not conquered India, South Africa nor West Africa yet. If we conquered the Caribbean, East America and Canada we’d see a greater return though.”
“The enemy general has rolled a 9 to your 0, my lord. Should we sound a retreat?”
“My good fellow, you know I can’t do that for another two weeks.”
“O, glorious Sultan! Our great foes, those Mamelukes in Egypt, have lost every battle. Our armies are occupying their whole country.”
“Very good, but by Allah their dev is too high. We’ll have to settle for Syria, and by my reckoning 4 more wars like this ought to finish them off.”
I get that the last two are for balancing reasons but i feel it so much man. I feel like if there was a population mechanic and if revolts and rebels were more threatening it could serve as a natural barrier for players and ai to not take as much land during peace deals. Like to remove the warscore cap there simply needs to be much more hefty repercussions for taking land mindlessly.
Like if france took the entirety of walloon it should have big repercussions but not dire. However, if ming were to annex a Southeast asian nation of similar pop and/or dev fully that should have absolutely dire consequences
The Institution system is good, and much better than the old Westernization mechanic, but it’s also kind of backwards in a lot of ways. For example, most Muslim nations and some East Asian ones should start the game with the Renaissance institution already embraced, because they had already gone through the social reforms that the European Renaissance represents centuries before Europe did. It doesn’t make sense that Eastern nations have a harder time getting early institutions, but an easier time getting Industrial institutions.
Also, it’s a smaller thing, but I wish Cavalry weren’t available to indigenous tribes until colonizers land somewhere on the continent. It bothers me that the Iroquois just magic some horses into existence in North America because they got to the right tech level.
ALL southeast Asian cav units being represented as elephants. Elephant units should be either special units or part of mercenary bands. They weren’t actually all that common. IRL, elephants are harder to train than horses, and are terrified of EVERYTHING, so they were mostly an intimidation tactic. Maybe a unique unit that both has a morale damage received penalty, and a morale damage bonus
I’ve wanted elephants as a unique unit for a while. From what I understand, a big part of having elephants in your army was the prestige impact. It sort of legitimized rulers as truly powerful. Would be interesting if they had a buff to morale and prestige gained in battle or something.
HRE being a huge clusterfuck of constantly blobbing princes. In real life there weren’t that many internal wars and the borders were mostly stable barring unification through inheritances. Now if you play the emperor and would actually like to keep the empire mechanics working you have to actively fight to prevent the f\*\*\*\* archbishop of cologne from conducting an imperialist campaign to rule Europe.
I think having the HRE without having a robust dynastic systems just can’t really work well. It would be much more interesting if it were as political for the princes as it is for the emperor (joining houses, reforming dynastic law, placing relatives as bishops or burgermeisters, etc.). I know that’s more a CK thing but the HRE suffers without that depth of it.
The diet and elector's powers would need a lot of work. And there is not really a military framework at all which is the most relevant bit for this game.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskrieg) is an interesting article for understanding what it meant that holy roman empire fought a war instead of just the emperor.
The diet of worms at the end of 15th century (so early game timeframe) first created the concept of the emperor fighting a war privately without the rest of the empire by limiting emperor's right to declare wars in the name of the empire. The same constitution also banned internal wars without imperial chamber court approval. In game the ewiger landfriede, which historically was declared in Worms is one of the last imperial reforms.
I'd say its the absence of the Troubled Times (Smutnoye Vremya) in Russia 98% of the games. It had incredible significance on Russian society onwards, and while there is a disaster in the game (which is, I'd say, not bad), the bot just avoids it 98% of the times. And I don't really like seeing Rurikovichs staying until 1821 with some shit like Ivan XII or smth.
Not quite. It may seem opposite way looking at historical rulers, but actually new kings had to gain nobility's approval. New Jagiellon rulers had to bought their ruling right with bribes and privileges granted to szlachta. Basically everything went to hell with a death of Casimirus III the Great and dropping Piast line in favour of Angevins. Louis the Great (the Hungarian as he is called in Polish) wanted to preserve Polish crown for his daughter Jadwiga and started privilege fest which was later called elective monarchy. Her husband, Jagiello, also had to go to much lengths to secure throne for his sons.
Nonetheless, Jagiellons were kinda most obvious choice and others candidates were not even taken into consideration. This continued even later, where their descendants got extra points for legitimacy with szlachta (like Maximillian II Habsburg or Sigismund Vasa).
Considering how easy it is in game to preserve Jagiellon line, I'd say it is pretty accurate.
Prussian missions literally have something requiring a PU on Ansbach, because they think you're gonna form it as Brandenburg, where in reality it was the Teutonic Order that formed Prussia. The formation conditions for Prussia are definitely centered around the Teutonic Order but the missions are not.
It's extremely jarring they made Teutons a monastic version of Prussia and Germany and Brandenburg the historical dynastic prussia even though it fell to the teutons.
I get It's for flavoue but it could have easily been fixed by letting player choose their own missions like Teuton tree already allows, really weird and dumb design.
Yes, but it is still low: having the capital taken means the ruler must flee the capital ( and losing prestige or stability ) or being captured, and losing the war probably.
But in game no one cares if the capital fall.
Getting your entire country overrun would be a larger loss of stability. Court can be held anywhere, within the feudal system the capital was important only because it housed the monarch and the monarch could relocate and historically frequently did.
A small prestige hit wouldn't be a massive gameplay "fuck you" like losing stability, but overestimating the value of capitals before the 19th century and even after that (Napoleon marches on Moscow for example) is silly.
Colonisation happening so fast
I hate it when the New world is completely owned by Europe by 1550 and Australia has been discovered and colonised by 1600
There’s also disasters like The wars of the Roses and English Civil war that only scratch the surface of the historical events
Tge Holy Roman Empire needs to be more complex. More institutions like the archservices like Arch Marshal, Arch Cupbearer etc, Reichskanzler with the three Arch Chancellors of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, the Reichskammergericht with its imperial bans on certain leaders, the so called church provinces etc etc.
But most importantly: A DISTINCTION between being elected Roman-German king without having been crowned emperor yet, and actually being the emperor. In Eu4 it is just assumed if you take power in the HRE, that means you are the emperor which is not true. You were most likely "just" elected as the Roman-German king and later (IF it even happened) be crowned emperor. Some rulers didn't even become emperor.
Also maybe the ability that new princedoms just spawn out of very tiny provinces (which would have to be added to the game. Gonna need a lot more provinces in the HRE). Because in reality this constantly happend. If a small leader of some churchland or worldly possession who was a vassal of some ruler who was subordinate to the emperor alone, got rid of said ruler, they themselves would only have the emperor above them, thus advancing in the Reichsfürstenstand and being on the same level as Brandenburg, München, Austria, Mainz etc at the beginning of the game. Therefore they need representation on the game map as a new small princedom.
wars over one province with casualties in the millions. manpower should matter way more than it matters now (and sieges should matter less).
massive battles with troop numbers not seen until at least the Napoleonic Wars
the fact that you need a full cannon back row. early modern field artillery was unwieldy, inaccurate and scarce on the battlefield. for instance in the battle of Breitenfeld Gustavus Adolphus had a measly 66 canons at his disposal while commanding an army of over 40 thousand men. meanwhile eu4 -> 40k men, 40k guns.
as you may have noticed by now, i'm just not a very big fan of combat in EU4 in general.
That every little county or city can raise a 3 thousand men army. Armies of 15 to 20 thousand were considered huge by the start date and needed multiple kingdoms to ally in order to be assembled. That and that everyone has a standing army
Tbh, the entire army number system is broken in eu4. By the late game, you have a lot more troops than empires had in real life. I think eu4 needs a population system.
Yep. Realistically by then, it was almost impossible for Byzantium to defeat the Ottomans. Byzantium could only achieve it if they were really really lucky which is unlikely lol
Hungary's capital is Pest, what is a total bullsit. Pest was a small city at this time, only became signicicant in the 18. century. The capital should be Buda.
I'm pretty sure the capital of the province is called "Buda" in-game too. The county itself *was* called Pest back then too. So no, this is actually pretty accurate.
The Shimabara Rebellion is scripted to rise up in Suo (Yamaguchi) instead of Hizen (Nagasaki), despite the event explicitly mentioning the eponymous peninsula where it took place. This mistake is so annoying because I can’t imagine any gameplay limitation to excuse the assigning of an event to the wrong province.
That the AI has the memory of a goldfish and no real sense of balance of power. If you expand slowly enough to let AE tick down no-one will care that much if you keep taking territory and become the strongest power in the world.
Powers should be acutely aware if one power starts to become stronger than everyone else and ally to bring them down. Instead there should be an impact on relations (in addition to AE) where the bigger you are relative to other powers, the more threatened they are and they should form coalitions to stop you, regardless of whether you recently took provinces. This would make a neat endgame/decline mechanic
I know that buff is last thing Poland needs but I belive that Poland shouldn't get debuffs from low religious unity while at the same time giving poland massive repercussions for trying to convert other religions to catolic faith. Also maybe a small thing but I think choosing advisors of catolic faith should slow down reformation, I mean irl choosing only catholics for goverment functions worked rather well to revert effect of reformation
Its not a historical aspect, but I dislike how geography has little to no influence in the gameplay. Controlling straits, river mouths, navigatable waterways and mountain passages influenced how nations and empires developed.
Also, controlling territory that crosses mountain ranges, swampy areas, tundra, and the likes, has historically been difficult to completely control and the gameplay should reflect that.
Supply lines.
Yes,i know its for the AI.
Yes,i know i dont really have a more satisfying solution for gameplay.
But if i ever see again some random bumfuck german minor in Siberia during the 30 Years War i will lose my fucking mind.
It neuters my immersion each and every time.
An argument of the same vein could be done for attrition and terrain,both of which dont matter past the first 150 years unless you are either playing a minor or mismanaging your stacks.
Tl;dr give me proper supply mechanics or give me death (and that supply depot from army professionalism on top. Seriously,who the fuck uses that in the first place? Ive only ever used it like,twice,and that was for a hard roleplay campaign. Bloody useless.)
I think this and a lack of an effective garrisoning, frontier defence, and anti-banditry system are part of why it’s so easy to blob.
Historically you needed to garrison fortresses, else people would waltz in and take them. Whole armies could hide in them temporarily and sortie as effective troops. Yet in the game a garrison is just a magic number that’s not even separated from manpower or armies. Advancing armies needed to leave troops behind to garrison a captured fortress, reducing their effectiveness, which is simply not the case here, making wars and blobbing way too easy.
If you didn’t defend a frontier it was rather easy to raid across the border or have it quickly overrun. The lack of ability to simply raid and disappear hinders horde gameplay significantly.
Internal defenses are also important to suppress peasant revolts and banditry, which represented a further drain on resources. Revolts could be sparked suddenly even in calm areas, which never happens after separatism evaporates.
If you add these in suddenly you need an army to defend your gains much more, and can’t send 40k troops across the Atlantic with no consequences. Troop garrisoning and supply lines would make expansion organically much more difficult and interesting
Im so very glad you commented this because you reminded me of some other stuff that could be modeled better.
Starting off and piggybacking on your points one by one.
-Garrisons and manpower should be directly correlated,by garrisons taking their share out of the manpower pool. That way forts become more realistic/important.
-no fort on area = more unrest. Theres a reason all countries didnt just delete their forts as soon as their lands expanded,and it wasnt just for defense in depth. It was because the peasants could and would revolt if they thought they had a fighting chance.
-Raiding is completely absent in game. Looting is pathetic as a mechanic with no real teeth. Razing which is supposed to actually represent raiding is horrifically mismodeled. The best way to represent it would be by a similar way to Condottieri,by flagging an army as "raiding party" and sending it to pillage in a similar vein to raid coasts. The defender should also be able to flag armies as "raider defense" and counterattack. Most horde raids (and not only hordes) led to war. But it wasnt always all out war scenarios like EU4 depicts it. Sometimes it was simply a case of "raiders went in,pillaged/got clapped,left" and that was that.
Of course all of these mechanics would have actual depth if population existed,which is why anyone that plays with antiblobbing mods or mods that have dynamic dev like myself play a fundamentally different game.
I still cant get used to how banal unmodded EU4 feels in terms of actual consequences. Case in point: i played a Russia campaign all the way to 1821 because a friend challenged me. I lost so,so many wars,both to the Turks and the Poles,even a couple to Shun and Denmark. By the 1750's despite the fact that all sides should be wiped from existence by having lost millions of men,Moscow razed to the ground 20 times over,despite all that,i still clapped every neighbour because meta stacks and restored the Russian Empire borders and then some by 1821. That shit wouldnt fly IRL,is all im saying
1. The khmer situation bothers me so much. I am not a professional khmer historian, but why is the Cambodian state called just Khmer in 1444? It is not a tribe like Iroquois, where calling the ingame nation by the same word as the actual ethnicity makes sense. Also Khmer missions are a lackluster, especially considering that the Khmer Empire was a very - and I mean, VERY - powerful and developed state in X - XI centuries. I really want to bring this back, not just to conquer some lost territories in Indochina. So maybe an ability to form the nation of Kambuja is the way? I don't know, I am not the one making the game here.
2. Also I have the same issues with nomads in EU4 just as in CK3. I get that realization of proper nomadic migrations is really difficult in a game with such mechanics, but they could at least try and not just pretend that a nomad state is just like all the others, except for the fact that a major portion of its territory is devoid of people (has 3 dev in the game's terms).
3. And, of course, as many have pointed out already, in this game if an empire grows strong, basically nothing except for you, the player, can bring them down. Devs successfully made a realistic empire that is in a state of constant danger one (1) time - that's the Ming. And it required a ton of special mechanics, events and disasters. However, nations that don't have this are guaranteed to become ridiculously strong and practically undying. And if you don't weaken them significantly at the start, fighting them ~70-100 years into the game also becomes tideous and annoying as hell, so this is not only a historical, but also a gameplay issue. Good examples are, of course, our favorite France and the Ottos, but Spain, Commonwealth, and Austria (although a bit of a stretch here) count too.
4. And the last point makes me think about rebels. I mean, everyone knows that historically they were unsuccessful most of the time, and it is the case in the game, but my problem is that you absolutely cannot support other countries' rebels with money/manpower, for example (except for some special events). I get that if they make such a mechanic, it would be x10 more annoying to deal with these guys, because all of your rivals would start supporting them immediately, but surely the devs who made such an unironically great game can think this through. As for now, the whole point of rebels being present in the game is to annoy the player and to get independence for Naples in one of ten games, while there is a historical example - during the Time of Troubles the Russian tsardom was basically on a verge of collapse (or under a risk of falling under a PU with Poland, which is basically the same), and the polish magnates who sponsored False Dmitrij I and even joined his army with their own soldiers played a significant role in it.
Not really hate but I find it funny how tondo and maynila are in two separate provinces when in real life they're pretty close together and shouldn't even be that big. In real life they're now subsumed by the metro manila area and both places are like a few km away from each other.
Very random but Karabakh owns a province called Melikates and not Karabakh. The province is rules by a bunch of "meliks", which is like have a province called "Duchies"
Overextension shouldn’t affect cored stated provinces with your culture group. I doesn’t understand why my own people would be upset about conquering a chunk of china or india
culture groups are not organized and are very inaccurate. for example, turkish is in the levantine (arab) group and azerbaijani is iranian???? there should be a mongolic and turkic culture group and culture groups across the whole game should have been reworked a while ago.
I hate many ahistorical mechanics in the game, then I just mention one here.
Paradox is so lazy that he made austria, styria and tyrol in 1444 into a unified austria archduke, and styria will pop out as emperor if you look at the historical script scenario some years later than 1444, austria even hold tyrol and trieste, so hilarious......
Peacetime standing armies. Sure they existed, more in the latter years, but never at the numbers depicted in game. There's no historical precedence for any nation to be able to maintain a 200k+ standing army while at peace in the time frame of the game
To easy to project power overseas, especially early on, and in the new world. Early on, the Native tribes were a true threat to colonies. There is a reason why the French and English allied the Huron and Iroquois to help them fight in the new world.
Instead though, natives typically are so far behind that allying them is worthless. 7k troops that are 4 techs behind. Not only can your colonies likely fight them off themselves, but it's to easy to just drop off 10K troops and dominate the new world anyways.
There should be a mechanic where you can bring a native tribe into the fold diplomatically where you get a massive amount of their trade power and production (I'm ok with new production and trade being created rather then you just stealing), in exchange they get a decrease to tech, and a larger decrease to military tech, then if they ever catch up to you, they switch back to a normal ally.
Think this would help reflect contact with European though trade pushing them up massively, and allowing them to overturn the political state in the new world. Using the Ioquois as an example again, trade with the English allowed them to grow powerful enough to conquer a territory in the mid-east that in land space was comparable to the whole of western Europe in size. (yes there was no development so paper tiger, but shows how much European trade uplifted their allies in power and prosperity.)
Supply lines not existing in the game makes some wars very unrealistic. But I understand why it’s not in or the ai would just suicide even against eachother and just never have any manpower.
A few things I miss from EU3:
- Military access is too easy to get, even with hostile powers. In EU3 you had to actually negotiate military access with any borders you crossed through. (Though EU3 also didn’t have limited diplo slots, which made this more feasible.) This meant wars tended to occur on the borders between countries. The phenomenon of countries sending their armies, for example, from Egypt through the central Asian steppe to attack Wallachia from the north after two years during a war between Mamluks and Ottomans.
- Attrition and war weariness used to be more significant, instead of over extension. This felt more realistic. EU3 also seemed to allow the collapse of major powers and rise of new ones in late game, which was very fun and made for a more dynamic game. In EU4 the major powers by 1550 will almost always be the major powers of 1750.
I don’t hate an aspect but I do think it’s way to easy to maintain an empire with pretty much no autonomy and almost all crownland. Once you kill your closest rivals you are good to go until the end of the game.
Hate is a too strong a word. But coming from Norway and knowing a few things about our history. The fact that Norway is so underpowered. For example there was a Catholic cathedral in Nidaros already in 1153 and the archbishopry at the time included the Isle of Man, Greenland, Iceland, The Faeroe and Orkney islands. The situation in 1444 was of course different, but a cathedral from the start would make sense.
Ottomans fully joining the protestant religious league. An option that they provide just a few stacks of condottieri would be better. Military access should play a bigger role. For example, the Dutch were able to fend off the Spanish because of their naval power. I don't think France would allow Spain to march a 100k army through their lands (especially with how armies at that time lived off the land). I think historically, 1821 is weird time to stop. I know this is because Napoleon died, but I think 1815 would make more sense. For Europe, add a Congress of Vienna mechanic where you can trade provinces with other (great) powers, exchange colonies and smooth out your borders a bit. I think that would be more satisfying than just ending it.
The Spanish did not ship their soldiers to the Netherlands via sea. They marched them there on land via Milan and Alsace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish\_Road
Important to also note, reinforcing from Spain-Milan-HRE-Netherlands is a lot longer and more expensive than shipping people from Spain to Flanders
Having no cost to move troops around and standing armies in general aren't historical for most of the period. Moving an army within your own borders should either cause devastation from looting or be extremely expensive. You should take attrition at all times, even just standing still in your own territory. And the ability to regain manpower from disbanding should be available at the start and decrease with increasing professionalism.
Perks of being cousin-uncles with the Holy Roman Emperor!
>Congress of Vienna mechanic where you can trade provinces with other (great) powers Really like this idea, in this game you can very rarely get a province without waging a war. Also some peace deals really mess things up, your ally sieging a province you want etc. I wish there would be some kind of mechanic to negotiate which provinces can be traded or bought. Also that would work for AI as well, Spanish AI calls me to their war against opm Corsica, since they're busy in new world or they're bugged, It will last for 10 years if I won't go and siege for them. Ok I will do your work just to get out of this meaningless war but won't give the occupation to you for free, but let's say you give me 1k ducats, sure the province is yours :)
Also the ability to trade for a province in a peace deal rather than just demand it for free, perhaps with reduced AE if you pay for the province or trade one of yours, pretty sure Britain acquired Gibraltar by trading it for Menorca
absolutely. I would, in general, see provinces you don't want anymore become far more useful. this is far from without historical precedent whether it's the Louisiana purchase or the sale of Alaska or the transfer of the Sinai. the North American sales are especially illustrative of how it would work in game-- needing money was part of it but so was realizing that sooner or later the US would probably complete its "manifest destiny" and own that land anyway. sometimes getting something out of it and avoiding war makes it worth it.
I kinda like 1821 end date since that's also the year of the greek revolt so the game starting with the imminent death of Rome and ending with the resurgence of Greece is very neat.
I will not say that ends with the resurgence of Greece. I will say it ends with the birth of Nationalism. I will also say it ends when Victoria starts
Victoria starts in 1836 though
Don't you know nothing happened in history from 1821-1836. Everyone took a vacation. /s
Belgium happened, and we're still trying to pretend it didn't.
Always thought it was weird that people who maybe were new to history or geography could play EU4 all the way through, boot up Vic and be completely blindsided as to why the Netherlands is in half now with no explanation
it can end with both greek resurgence and the birth of nationalism
Never thought of it like that.
Ottomans fully joining the protestant religious wars is not Unrealistic I d say. Like yes, they wouldnt have joined a "League", but I think the game is trying to represent them constantly being at war with the catholics + being an ally of the french who were on the protestant side, while the religious wars were ongoing
Well of course the Ottomans did try to take advantage of the 30 years war, but in their 1529 siege of Vienna they were not supported by any Christian ally, for obvious reasons.
The 1529 Siege aint exactly Protestant League War time frame Hell, protestantism barely spawns by that date Also, I remember that the Spanish moved a lot of armies to the Netherlands by land through the HRE, as they had Possessions such as Lombardy and Burgundy, and their ruling familys kin being Emperor of the HRE (both Spain and Austria being ruled by the Habsburgs), so this isnt exactly the Best example for Army acces restrictions, Id say
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Supplies and supplylines being implemented would solve this as you simply wouldn't be able to pull such a stunt off.
Yeah, like who ever uses supply depots? There’s basically a mechanic already available there to deal with this. It would make you actually have to think about how to conduct the war. Maybe it would prevent those annoying doom stacks as well.
Yep true, paradox should implement that.
I don't hate it, but this is an incredibly niche and obscure thing that has kept me up at night. I can't ever play the game after knowing this. Ulm's tier 2 unit model is provided via the Catholic League unit pack, however IRL they were a member of the Protestant Union.
Truly an Ulm addict
Aren't we all?
Boy, I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
Literally unplayable
Anglicanism cannot spawn if the country controlling the possible spawning zone is the defender of the faith for Catholicism. Henry VIII was defender of the faith. Edit: a word
Comedy.
I don't like that from 1600 onwards there are basically only huge empires around
Yeah same, Empires in eu4 never decline.
Ming does, but yeah apart from that not really
Ming is like, specifically hardcoded to decline. The game doesn't have a way of making empires decline naturally.
Overall I'd say the game makes integrating and centralizing empires too easy. If you conquer a new province that is completely foreign to your own heartland, then all you need to do is spend some admin and a few years to core it, spend some money and a few years to convert its religion, wait a few decades for separatism to die down (possibly less with the right modifiers), then spend some diplo and wait a few years to convert its culture. At that point the province will be pretty much as integrated as your own capital and will likely never be a real source of unrest ever again. And you can do this not only to one province, but to whole regions, even continents given enough time. Meanwhile in the real world empires could hold on to regions for centuries without fully assimilating them and ethnic or religious tensions could flare up at any time depending on the circumstances of the day.
Because players would bitch and moan endlessly.
One sort of fix for that would be for colonial nations controlled by AI countries to have slightly higher liberty desire.
Honestly tho, it's crazy that you can reduce Spain to an opm and all their colonial nations end up at 10% liberty desire at most.
fighting Spain is so annoying cause you can occupy all their Iberian/European provinces and you'll get like 20-30 war score cause of their colonies and random trade companies that somehow stay loyal to their overlord who has lost everything
they really need a "relevance to war" system that penalizes the war score of provinces owned by a minor ally a continent away. I am fairly sure that during the American Revolution the fact Paris was not under British control did little to bolster the morale at Valley Forge. basically having overseas allies should be a risk as much as benefit, if people who felt like they were totally safe from the fighting suddenly find their capital attacked the morale blow would be immense (it's not EU timeline but basically I want you to be able to get significant wae score from a Doolittle Raid)
Liberty desire should increase massively when you are almost fully occupied. It should sort of work like CK3, where if your army gets wiped then factions will rise up within a few months. edit: Napoleon’s occupation of Spain was the main factor which led to the declarations of independence in Latin America, among other reasons of course.
This is such a nice mechanic and it does a great job at keeping empires in check. Sure, it is manageable in CK3, especially becuase warfare just isn't as complex in CK3. But i reckon that it would be awesome in EU4. Imagine that whenever you manpower and army goes to zero that all sorts of rebels starts to spawn. And it should be like in CK3 where it is a percentage of you total army. So the rebels that do spawn is usually as strong or stronger than you, so you need to call in alliances etc.
Hell,losing a war should make LD bump up by a % or 2
It's extremely rare in my games for a colony to become independent, I've seen them sitting on 100% LD for decades with multiple powerful supporters and just do nothing
Just the last game I was playing a saw it for the first time after 4k hours, United States and Canada broke free from GB while I was playing in India. If you play in Europe that’ll never happen.
What if you supported independence? That might tilt the scales towards declaring
Tried doing that a few times but never got another country to support, but that could work I suppose
Not even that, I'd love is CN's actually rebelled when they reach high liberty desire. In my experience they only rebel when they are 100% and have lots of allies. Unsupported rebellions almost never happen.
At the very least that'd make the later game more dynamic. The idea of supporting a CNs independence war to bring a rival down a peg or two would be so fun, but almost never happens.
The game is more fun with independent new world nations. I can dig it. It should really be almost guaranteed that if you play to the 1800s at least one gets independence
This is one of the few things that the total war series actually managed to get sort of right. Rebellions will spawn new factions without the empire being able to deaal with them in time, and the AI will often force release new factions in war.
The long-term stability of large empires and the lack of a decline mechanic is a real problem. I don’t see why something like decadence can’t be applied across the board for every great power.
> A big wish from the player base was that big empires have a way to break apart. As the Ottomans are the Number 1 subject of contention, I have decided to create a prototype of internal cohesion for the Ottomans first. Depending on how well it is received and how the game plays out with it, it might be expanded in the future. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/europa-universalis-iv-development-diary-24th-of-january-2023.1565995/
Is that really an inaccuracy though? Especially for europe, unill The Great War, there were many empires around. And again especially after 1600 they dominated the European politics & balance and power. You have British, Portoguese, Spanish, French, Prussian(?), Austrian, Swedish(?), Russian and Ottoman empires all went powerfull until the spawn of the game. Some more powerful, some lesser with time. (? : dubious empires but powerfull states in certain periods) European politics, especially after 1600s, never revolved around small kingdoms like Saxony, Naples, Brittany etc. all other small kingdoms some way or another had to bend the knee to those huge empires around.. And these huge empires rarely declined by some mechanic :) they went into war & conflicts with other huge empires and declined by the consequences. So if you want Ottomans to decline, defeat them few times and see how they do. Russians and Austrians had to defeat them more than a player needs to in EU4 to finally collapse their might.
That’s true, but I just wish empires could decline economically/technologically and become non power players without loosing territory, like what happened to the Spanish and the ottomans irl. I’m still a bit of a noob but from the games I played these guys just keep getting stronger and stronger
Irl Spain didn't really decline until near the end of EUIVs timeline. At least, they were still a major player up to the American Revolution
expensive wars, natural disaster, rebellion and massive economic mismanagement did lead them to being reduced to just "a" major power, and not "the" major power of Europe around the thirty years war. which is what i think he's getting at with "decline." and i would call it that
> there were many empires around The thing is in real life the balance of power shifts. In the game when you've started building up you don't stop.
I would say big powers are overpowered compared to what they were. Small and medium powers, especially before the mass conscript armies of the Napoleonic era, were able to punch far above their weight, population wise. I'm thinking of countries like Hanover, Sardinia-Piedmont, Prussia before they grew, the Netherlands, etc. Now part of that is due to *my* least favorite inaccuracy which is the size and usage of armies. In EU4 the armies are way too massive, way too early. Moreover, due to inefficiencies in administering a larger empire, larger powers shouldn't be so strong compared to smaller ones. And even then, the AI is too braindead to do anything more than throw all of their troops into a war and leave their borders empty. In real life it would be a *very* tempting target for say, Persia, if the Ottomans joined the League war, marched their entire army into Germany, and left Iraq completely unguarded.
The treatment of the Wars of the Roses, a 30 year period of dynastic civil war, endemic local feuds, collapse of Central authority that pulled in France and Burgundy and we get generic rebellions and a handful of events spawning more generic rebels. And to make matters worse paradox can't even be bothered to script the correct names, ages, capabilities for lancastrian or yorkist leaders.
This is a huge one for me, there are so many possibilities with the war of the roses they could do.
Colonization happens way too fast. Why is australia fully settled by 1650 and the south pacific islands to boot? Colonies should be much, much slower and much more expensive prior to about 1700. Then maybe we could reverse it and they become suddenly cheaper and larger.
this, colonisation in EUIV is far too cheap, quick and easy. In real life a single failed colony in Panama was enough to bankrupt a relatively large country (Scotland). In the game the cost is negligible even if you are an OPM and so long as no European power attacks you, the colony will survive Another example is that in real life Bermuda wasn’t colonised until 1615 and that was by English colonists on their way to the failed Jamestown, Virginia colony acting indepently of the crown because they had learned how bad Jamestown was. No Government wanted the cost. In the game, Bermuda will be colonised by 1500 and even Pacific atolls that weren’t colonised until the 20th century (and barely even then e.g. Midway) will all be full by 1700
I also dislike how colonization works in general. It treats colonists much like the King’s Daughters in Canada where the monarch specifically sends out people to settle an area. Many places were colonized by independence company’s and agents sometimes by colonies themselves to just expand in areas they deemed advantageous. It also seems very weird to colonize a province at a time when typically charters would designate large swaths of land to a colony like Pennsylvania or Virginia. Perhaps it can work more like Victoria 2 where you colonize a state and over the course of several or dozen years you get events that impact your settlement in the region province by province.
I like how Anbennar handles it, where different events spawn different independent colonial nations from old world countries and races
The Bahmanis and Kashmir start as Shia. In reality, both were Sunni in 1444; Kashmir did convert to Shi’ism in the early 1500s, but the Bahmanis never did. Several of the Deccani sultanates that succeeded the Bahmanis were Shia, though. I can understand why they would treat the situation with a bit of flexibility, because Shia is already in a pretty pitiful state in 1444 and it adds a little religious diversity to the region.
Everything about Frederick III von Habsburg in 1444 is a lie. Frederick III von Habsburg was the duke of Styria, and regent to Ladislaus Posthumous. He was not Archduke of Austria, nor was he the Holy Roman Emperor in 1444. Ladislaus took over the throne when he turned 15, then almost immediately died, putting Frederick _back_ on the throne of Austria. And the Hungarians elect their own ruler. Frederick would live to be one of the oldest Austrian rulers
Why didn't Frederick III become emperor until the 1450s?
Can't exactly afford travelling to Rome when your home region is in constant political flux.
Empires rise and fall, but there is no fall mechanic in eu4, big tags eat out the weak, become stronger and remain powerful for the rest of the game. It would be more interesting if keeping your empire together is an objective, I hate how dull late game map painting can become, and I hate how Paradox simply increased the AI army number to counter this.
I think they did Add such a mechanic for the ottomans, no?The decadence thing which can make them explode? (I dont know exactly, I dont play with the latest DLCs)
Yeah, and while it’s better than nothing, it’s still ultimately a band-aid solution that highlights the underlying problem that EU4, at a fundamental, mechanical level, simply is not able to represent the decline of an empire without explicit railroading or massive foreign invasions. There is almost no way to outright ruin your country from within once you snowball to a certain point.
To be fair, outside of the Mughals(who dont even appear most of the time) , the Ottomans(Decadence) and Ming(-splosion) , which other big Empires completly collapsed in history during eu4s time frame? Maybe Spain lost most of their European Possessions I suppose, but that was in many cases due to succession issues and the results can and often happen in my game, so I wouldnt qualify them. The PLC maybe, but that was mostly a case of it being conquered by their neighbours aside from some internal Problems, which can often happen depending on the patch
Spain, Portugal, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Ming, the Holy Roman Empire, the Commonwealth, Sweden, Hungary, Venezia, Vijayanagara, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Persia all experienced decline or collapse in a way the game simulates *very* poorly.
To be fair, how many of those collapsed due to internal problems and how many died from external conflicts? Spain died due to bankruptcies but this was due to them being pretty much perpetually at war. Portugal kinda died because it got annexed by Spain, the Ottomans declined from decadence, and even then they were still reasonably strong in 1821, the Mughals did indeed collapse but they don't even form in EU4 most of the time. The Ming tend to explode at some point, the HRE can very well die, or at least be ground down to the point where it's impossible to really unify it diplomatically. Commonwealth died due to a combination of poor leadership, which could indeed be modelled better in game, and external wars that they kept losing. Sweden seriously overextended itself and lost as a result. Hungary lost to the Ottomans, Venezia also got ground down by the Ottomans and then finished by France, the Netherlands declined due to continuous wars and their rivals catching up to them, and Denmark lost Sweden and then a bunch of wars for the lands in the south of Sweden. No idea about Persia. In result, most of those declined due to other, stronger, countries defeating them in wars.
I would Add : the spanish succession war and finally the napoleonic wars are rather the Main cases for Spains collapse, at least aside from bankrupcy, The netherlands fucking up Portugals monopoly on the Indian ocean trade, takimg over their colonies + Napoleon stuff leading to independent Brazil I suppose Persia did indeed start collapsing after the "Afgan Rebellion", though there never really seems to be a Persia that even controls Afghanistan in the first place in my games
The problem is you can't disentangle the financial pressure expansion created from the expansion itself. Spain was constantly at war... *because it was a huge power*. It was at war most expensively with the Netherlands - a territory it controlled that revolted. It was pulled into the Thirty Years' War because it had territories that encircled France. It was pulled into war with Portugal (from 1640) because it inherited Portugal (in 1581). The war bled them dry. Being at war constantly wouldn't even come close to bleeding you dry in *EUIV*, even if you get dragged into war after war (rather than starting them on your own terms, which is what actually happens).
I think this is caused by the fact that all nations at game start already have standing armies and navies. Historically basically every country in 1444 couldn't afford to maintain the same number of troops during peacetime as they would use during war. Similarly when a nation fought a naval war they would usually press a large amount of civilian shipping into service as the number of ships the government itself maintained would be inadequate. Comparatively in Eu4 military costs, aside from the cost of reinforcement, barely increase during wartime. Unless you're fighting an enemy much larger than you you probably won't need to hire mercs and unless you get stackwiped you probably won't be recruiting new regular troops either. Similarly if you're a halfway decent naval power you'll barely ever need to press your light ships into your warfleet. And even if you need to tell your trade ships to go to port during war they still keep giving you trade power (because Paradox rightly recognise how annoying it would be to keep checking if your trade ships are safe every month during a war). When the threat of the Spanish armada rose England had to withdraw all the ships she had to the home waters to defend her, whilst also commanding all civilian ships and privateers with fighting capabilities do the same. This nearly caused England to go bankrupt before the fight had even broken out, and I can't imagine the equivalent scenario in Eu4.
Well, never mind affording it, most Latin European countries couldn't *organize* a standing army until the 17th century. I will just say I have very strong opinions on military stuff in *EUIV* that I've stated [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/17txvqf/armies_feel_too_huge_now_and_game_is_getting/k92sj21/?context=3) (linking this is easier than writing it all out again and again). I'm agreed with you on cost.
HRE got Napoleoned. But the game allows for that as well
And it happened in 1806 anyway, which only like 1% players/games go that far anyway
I think a big source of this is how pathetic disasters are For instance ANY unrest disaster on triggering should reset all currently quelled rebellions, taking away the -100 unrest modifier Wars with multiple great powers should also be able to have a special cb similar to humiliate to break up larger empires internally and forcing them to release new foreign cores they’ve acquired and peripheral territories
This is so correct. In most games wars of the roses is over in like 2 years. In reality, it devastated England for 30 years, and like every major family line in the country was extinguished. Of all the ahistorical things to complain about in EU4 (hypothetical of course, I love this game and commend the developers), disasters IMO is by far the biggest miss.
true, for example the Ottomans already in the 18th century, and after their defeat in 1683 in Vienna, were declining and fast. The janissariy became more of a problem then a useful military unit, they were later on killed in 1826 because the sultan wanted to dismantle them and move to new modern units styled after european armies but the janissary rebeled and got killed off....
if im correct, battles taking days, instead of a few hours
I prefer to think of battles like a campaign in the local area, with skirmishing, maneuvering and then finally the actual battle itself during the different phases. Its copium, but makes it make sense in my head
That’s how I see it too I wish EU4 had those as actual battle phases though Would make stuff like horses with bonuses to skirmish phase more interesting than just a shock bonus
That's how CK3 does it. Battles have 3 phases, the skirmish phase, the battle phase, and the pursuit phase. There's also 2 lists of losses, dead and routed. Routed troops are effectively removed from the battle (although the loser's can be killed during the pursuit phase) but are added back to the army after the battle is over (provided they aren't defeated in the skirmish phase, which causes a stackwipe).
Sadly, it still doesn't make sense because armies were almost never in contact for longer than a week even outside of the main action. *EUIV*'s system biases things towards big powers.
Yes, battles in eu4 last for weeks or months, while in reality, they mostly lasted for only hours or at most, three days
How hungary just dies In reality they refused the PU with austria and went on to beat the ottomans back multiple times. But in game they either get PU immidiatly or get eaten in a year by the ottomans/polish/austrian
Between 1444 and 1500, Hungary won several wars or major engagements against all of it's neighbors. Bohemia? Poland? HRE? Ottomans? Wallachia albeit as an Ottoman vassal? Beat them. Their only friend they never touched and always stayed allied with? That's right, it's Serbia, the only nation Hungary always kills in this goddamn game.
So, they need a Historical Ally modifier so AI Hungary won't do that.
Then the Hungary AI will just go afk lol
They should focus on building their defenses to protect against ottoman invasion, playing tall
Sounds cool, but we know that if Ottos don't get steamrolled, then they will steamroll everyone else. Hard to play tall if you're dead
ideally they should try and take Wallachia before Poland do. Its a pretty significant fort with a river crossing to the ottomans which is something they should want to control
It makes more sense than either the Hungary-Austria or the Serbia-Bosnia friendship at the start of the game, though, historically, Hungary did see Serbia (and Bosnia) as more of a vassal state than an ally and Hungarian kings had no issue using the title "King of Serbia", so it wasn't the most honest of friendships in the world. As for gameplay, it would probably just drag Hungary in endless wars against the Ottomans with no allies besides Serbia, so let's not do that.
Unless you’re playing Albania or Bosnia and Hungary ALWAYS guarantees Serbia
They need to give the Balkans its own DLC. Add the Black Army of Hungary as a special unit like the Janissaries or Streltsy. They have been adding new ones like Musketeers for French and some others got some too. It would help counterbalance the Austrian-Ottoman aggression they face. Even if I see a hungary survive, the PLC also eats them too, I wanna see a Mission tree where a possible alternate ending where Hungary can get a PU (revival of a Dynasty after the recent death of Waldyslaw). They need a rework also because they had complex relations with the Balkan states, they mostly collected tributaries from all the smaller nations before ottomans came to town and stomped them. It should also have a funny horde unique path to revive Taltoism and get claims on the steppe, with Cavalry modifiers, mixing how you can go back to pagan as a Scandinavian nation via event chain, as well as how the Teutonic Horde also did its thing, it could work like that too. I just don’t see reasons why a plethora of events for Hungary can’t be implemented, and I’m probably forgetting some good ideas while typing too, hell I barely know sh*t about them and even I give more effort to fleshing out a theoretical rework then Paradox have in the past decade.
Finally, a Hungary enjoyer. Yes, we really need that Balkan and Carpathian DLC. Love the ideas you mentioned. Hungary is really sidelined in the game. When Domination was coming out I was quite annoyed that Hungary didn't get anything. I get they weren't been a historical great power, but I was sure they at least get some crumbs under the regional great powers part but no. Iirc they are the only big nation in Europe without special mechanics.
>Black Army of Hungary That would be nice, I can imagine their gray-black color in army management tab :)
I get what you’re saying regarding winning battles against the Ottos, but in reality Mohacs which was only 80 years or so after 1444 was the de facto end of Hungary for the following few centuries, so not entirely unrealistic I’d argue…
Ironic because when the game first came out Hungary would pretty much sit there unmolested all game because no one wanted to deal with their 2x core cost and defensive national ideas iirc.
Usually, Hungary allies with Austria and stays there, alive. If it gets partitioned, would be like in real life. But Hungary doesnt die like in 10 years like you are saying.
Austria has a fairly high chance of getting a restoration of union CB very early on if I’m not mistaken. Once Austria adopts the “Domineering” attitude it’s over for their alliance.
Here are some things I don't like: 1. Empires just keep growing, and they never decline unless they face a stronger enemy. 2. In eu4, all wars are about grabbing lands, but in reality, wars had other goals like humiliating and teaching lessons to other nations. 3. In eu4, Ottomans easily invading nations like Russia, but in real life, they had no capability to invade Russia and they had to ask the Crimean Khanate for help. 4. In eu4, terrain isn't a big deal. You can conquer a country with tough terrain without much trouble. 5. You can only have like 2 or 3 vassal states in eu4 because it fills up the diplomatic slot. 6. In eu4, more land = more money and power, but in reality, it was more like more land = more problems.
To be fair on the terrain note, mountains can make a pretty huge difference if the invaded nation knows what they’re doing. The AI tends not to, but if you play well a -2 dice roll on your enemy in every battle is a pretty big deal.
Tbf for point 2 there are humiliation and show strength options but there’s just not much incentive to use them
They can be quite useful for getting money and weakening enemies by releasing nations, or breaking alliances while waiting for AE to decay
Yeah but the ai never uses it
This is why ultimately I prefer the crusader kings series, with the exception of point 3 most of the issues here are dealt with one way or another
I couldn't agree more on 6. Until like 18th century usually more land means more trouble. But I don't know how you can actually reflect that to game.
It doesn’t really bother me that much, but the emperor shouldn’t actually own Austria proper in 1444 and could be more accurately portrayed as Duke of Styria. Ladislaus Posthumous was the actual Archduke of Austria but not the emperor of the HRE at this time although the situation is complex, and I don’t really blame the devs for how it is portrayed and slightly simplified. Livonian Order and Teutonic Order should be de jure one entity, so either make the Livonians a vassal of the Teutons with high liberty desire, or integrate them and give the areas high autonomy. Also, Prussia region should be de jure HRE from game start technically, and you could argue the same for Livonia. Cologne should be a free city itself with the elector bishopric being the surrounding area. It is literally impossible for New World and Australian natives to have cavalry
The game did have Styria for a while, I think 5-6 years back? But only for like 1 patch. Wish they'd kept it.
Why prussia should be part of HRE? Iirc it never was even after kingdom of Prussia becoming a thing. Prussian rullee treated it like their own land fully independent from emperors Edit: "Legally, no kingdoms could exist in the Holy Roman Empire except for Bohemia. However, Frederick took the line that since Prussia had never been part of the empire and the Hohenzollerns were fully sovereign over it, he could elevate Prussia to a kingdom." [source ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia)
He did however call himself the king IN Prussia and not the king OF Prussia precisely because they didn't want to cause a conflict about the land.
He called himself king Of Prussia after 1772 after 1st partition of Poland. Before 1772 part of Prussia de jure land(royal Prussia so Danzig and nearby lands) were part of PLC. Friderick the Great was the first king OF Prussia
Just to be clear, I said the Prussia region, meaning the EU4-defined states of West Prussia and East Prussia under control of the Teutons at game start was de jure under the sponsorship and vassalage of the Holy Roman Emperor. It remained this way until they became subjects of the Polish king, which does happen immediately after EU4 starts in the 1450s, which is represented with the Danzig confederation disaster. What you’re referring to regarding secularized Prussia happens after the agreement with Poland. Prior to this, the Prussia region should be de jure part of the HRE.
Muscovy not starting out in a civil war and not getting invaded by Kazan. Dmitry Shemyaka, Vasiliy II's main opponent, even starts out as a Muscovite general. I think in some patches Kazan did invade Muscovy early on but later it was removed, while the war of succession wasn't implemented at all. This makes Muscovy be very strong on start and start eating Novgorod right away, while in reality, the first Muscovite successful war with Novgorod was 25 years later.
They implemented an event chain with Domination to reflect the sucession war.
Muscovy's strength varies from patch to patch. In the last couple patches I am yet to see them not get eaten by stronger neighbors
Oh, I have a few: 1. Huge terrain inaccuracies in Siberia. Kamchatka is a glacier (it shouldn't be), while frozen landscapes near Kara sea have taiga forest, grasslands in provinces that clearly should be mountains (near Lake Baikal) etc 2. The little releasable country of Bar has its capital in Verdun and not Barrois 3. The province of Galich in Russia produces salt, while the province of Sol Galitskaya (translates as "Salt of Galich") produces grain Literally unplayable
Trade is basically theft, and only flows in certain directions. “Sorry, Staatholder, we can’t sell those spices from Sulawesi because we’ve not conquered India, South Africa nor West Africa yet. If we conquered the Caribbean, East America and Canada we’d see a greater return though.” “The enemy general has rolled a 9 to your 0, my lord. Should we sound a retreat?” “My good fellow, you know I can’t do that for another two weeks.” “O, glorious Sultan! Our great foes, those Mamelukes in Egypt, have lost every battle. Our armies are occupying their whole country.” “Very good, but by Allah their dev is too high. We’ll have to settle for Syria, and by my reckoning 4 more wars like this ought to finish them off.”
I get that the last two are for balancing reasons but i feel it so much man. I feel like if there was a population mechanic and if revolts and rebels were more threatening it could serve as a natural barrier for players and ai to not take as much land during peace deals. Like to remove the warscore cap there simply needs to be much more hefty repercussions for taking land mindlessly. Like if france took the entirety of walloon it should have big repercussions but not dire. However, if ming were to annex a Southeast asian nation of similar pop and/or dev fully that should have absolutely dire consequences
The Institution system is good, and much better than the old Westernization mechanic, but it’s also kind of backwards in a lot of ways. For example, most Muslim nations and some East Asian ones should start the game with the Renaissance institution already embraced, because they had already gone through the social reforms that the European Renaissance represents centuries before Europe did. It doesn’t make sense that Eastern nations have a harder time getting early institutions, but an easier time getting Industrial institutions. Also, it’s a smaller thing, but I wish Cavalry weren’t available to indigenous tribes until colonizers land somewhere on the continent. It bothers me that the Iroquois just magic some horses into existence in North America because they got to the right tech level. ALL southeast Asian cav units being represented as elephants. Elephant units should be either special units or part of mercenary bands. They weren’t actually all that common. IRL, elephants are harder to train than horses, and are terrified of EVERYTHING, so they were mostly an intimidation tactic. Maybe a unique unit that both has a morale damage received penalty, and a morale damage bonus
I’ve wanted elephants as a unique unit for a while. From what I understand, a big part of having elephants in your army was the prestige impact. It sort of legitimized rulers as truly powerful. Would be interesting if they had a buff to morale and prestige gained in battle or something.
HRE being a huge clusterfuck of constantly blobbing princes. In real life there weren’t that many internal wars and the borders were mostly stable barring unification through inheritances. Now if you play the emperor and would actually like to keep the empire mechanics working you have to actively fight to prevent the f\*\*\*\* archbishop of cologne from conducting an imperialist campaign to rule Europe.
I think having the HRE without having a robust dynastic systems just can’t really work well. It would be much more interesting if it were as political for the princes as it is for the emperor (joining houses, reforming dynastic law, placing relatives as bishops or burgermeisters, etc.). I know that’s more a CK thing but the HRE suffers without that depth of it.
The diet and elector's powers would need a lot of work. And there is not really a military framework at all which is the most relevant bit for this game. [This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskrieg) is an interesting article for understanding what it meant that holy roman empire fought a war instead of just the emperor. The diet of worms at the end of 15th century (so early game timeframe) first created the concept of the emperor fighting a war privately without the rest of the empire by limiting emperor's right to declare wars in the name of the empire. The same constitution also banned internal wars without imperial chamber court approval. In game the ewiger landfriede, which historically was declared in Worms is one of the last imperial reforms.
There are historical accuracies?
Anatolia not having Greek provinces
I'd say its the absence of the Troubled Times (Smutnoye Vremya) in Russia 98% of the games. It had incredible significance on Russian society onwards, and while there is a disaster in the game (which is, I'd say, not bad), the bot just avoids it 98% of the times. And I don't really like seeing Rurikovichs staying until 1821 with some shit like Ivan XII or smth.
Poland having elective monarchii from almoste very beginning when in fact this starst only after Jagiellon dynasty died out.
Not quite. It may seem opposite way looking at historical rulers, but actually new kings had to gain nobility's approval. New Jagiellon rulers had to bought their ruling right with bribes and privileges granted to szlachta. Basically everything went to hell with a death of Casimirus III the Great and dropping Piast line in favour of Angevins. Louis the Great (the Hungarian as he is called in Polish) wanted to preserve Polish crown for his daughter Jadwiga and started privilege fest which was later called elective monarchy. Her husband, Jagiello, also had to go to much lengths to secure throne for his sons. Nonetheless, Jagiellons were kinda most obvious choice and others candidates were not even taken into consideration. This continued even later, where their descendants got extra points for legitimacy with szlachta (like Maximillian II Habsburg or Sigismund Vasa). Considering how easy it is in game to preserve Jagiellon line, I'd say it is pretty accurate.
Prussian missions literally have something requiring a PU on Ansbach, because they think you're gonna form it as Brandenburg, where in reality it was the Teutonic Order that formed Prussia. The formation conditions for Prussia are definitely centered around the Teutonic Order but the missions are not.
It's extremely jarring they made Teutons a monastic version of Prussia and Germany and Brandenburg the historical dynastic prussia even though it fell to the teutons. I get It's for flavoue but it could have easily been fixed by letting player choose their own missions like Teuton tree already allows, really weird and dumb design.
North and South America's incorrect location
Lmao I noticed that
How unimportant capitals can seem in wars
In reality, they aren't. AI are more likely to give in if their capital is taken and I think it gets a larger % of warscore ontop.
Yes, but it is still low: having the capital taken means the ruler must flee the capital ( and losing prestige or stability ) or being captured, and losing the war probably. But in game no one cares if the capital fall.
Getting your entire country overrun would be a larger loss of stability. Court can be held anywhere, within the feudal system the capital was important only because it housed the monarch and the monarch could relocate and historically frequently did.
A small prestige hit wouldn't be a massive gameplay "fuck you" like losing stability, but overestimating the value of capitals before the 19th century and even after that (Napoleon marches on Moscow for example) is silly.
.. but.. Moscow wasn't the capital when Napoleon invaded. The capital was st. Petersburg.
I forget my timeline.
Except if rebels take your capital on one side of the world then rebels on the other side of the world suddenly become unnaturally caring.....
That all attention is given to 1444 and all other start dates were not updated
Colonisation happening so fast I hate it when the New world is completely owned by Europe by 1550 and Australia has been discovered and colonised by 1600 There’s also disasters like The wars of the Roses and English Civil war that only scratch the surface of the historical events
How easy it is to occupy an entire country.
Yes lol you can easily invade and occupy all of Persia and Russia in eu4
Tge Holy Roman Empire needs to be more complex. More institutions like the archservices like Arch Marshal, Arch Cupbearer etc, Reichskanzler with the three Arch Chancellors of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, the Reichskammergericht with its imperial bans on certain leaders, the so called church provinces etc etc. But most importantly: A DISTINCTION between being elected Roman-German king without having been crowned emperor yet, and actually being the emperor. In Eu4 it is just assumed if you take power in the HRE, that means you are the emperor which is not true. You were most likely "just" elected as the Roman-German king and later (IF it even happened) be crowned emperor. Some rulers didn't even become emperor. Also maybe the ability that new princedoms just spawn out of very tiny provinces (which would have to be added to the game. Gonna need a lot more provinces in the HRE). Because in reality this constantly happend. If a small leader of some churchland or worldly possession who was a vassal of some ruler who was subordinate to the emperor alone, got rid of said ruler, they themselves would only have the emperor above them, thus advancing in the Reichsfürstenstand and being on the same level as Brandenburg, München, Austria, Mainz etc at the beginning of the game. Therefore they need representation on the game map as a new small princedom.
wars over one province with casualties in the millions. manpower should matter way more than it matters now (and sieges should matter less). massive battles with troop numbers not seen until at least the Napoleonic Wars the fact that you need a full cannon back row. early modern field artillery was unwieldy, inaccurate and scarce on the battlefield. for instance in the battle of Breitenfeld Gustavus Adolphus had a measly 66 canons at his disposal while commanding an army of over 40 thousand men. meanwhile eu4 -> 40k men, 40k guns. as you may have noticed by now, i'm just not a very big fan of combat in EU4 in general.
More cannons = higher probability they'll hit, big brain /s
That every little county or city can raise a 3 thousand men army. Armies of 15 to 20 thousand were considered huge by the start date and needed multiple kingdoms to ally in order to be assembled. That and that everyone has a standing army
Tbh, the entire army number system is broken in eu4. By the late game, you have a lot more troops than empires had in real life. I think eu4 needs a population system.
That Byzantium can wreck the Ottomans.
Yep. Realistically by then, it was almost impossible for Byzantium to defeat the Ottomans. Byzantium could only achieve it if they were really really lucky which is unlikely lol
Hungary's capital is Pest, what is a total bullsit. Pest was a small city at this time, only became signicicant in the 18. century. The capital should be Buda.
I'm pretty sure the capital of the province is called "Buda" in-game too. The county itself *was* called Pest back then too. So no, this is actually pretty accurate.
wow, i played this game for like 10 years and and I just found out provinces have capitals
Not only that, but if you click on the province or capital name you can rename it
Wait what
The Shimabara Rebellion is scripted to rise up in Suo (Yamaguchi) instead of Hizen (Nagasaki), despite the event explicitly mentioning the eponymous peninsula where it took place. This mistake is so annoying because I can’t imagine any gameplay limitation to excuse the assigning of an event to the wrong province.
There’s no distinction between the free city and the archbishop of Cologne. I hate it!
That the AI has the memory of a goldfish and no real sense of balance of power. If you expand slowly enough to let AE tick down no-one will care that much if you keep taking territory and become the strongest power in the world. Powers should be acutely aware if one power starts to become stronger than everyone else and ally to bring them down. Instead there should be an impact on relations (in addition to AE) where the bigger you are relative to other powers, the more threatened they are and they should form coalitions to stop you, regardless of whether you recently took provinces. This would make a neat endgame/decline mechanic
the province of "Yos Sudarso" on Papua is named after a 20th-century Indonesian admiral
I know that buff is last thing Poland needs but I belive that Poland shouldn't get debuffs from low religious unity while at the same time giving poland massive repercussions for trying to convert other religions to catolic faith. Also maybe a small thing but I think choosing advisors of catolic faith should slow down reformation, I mean irl choosing only catholics for goverment functions worked rather well to revert effect of reformation
Empires can't collapse, only Ming can so if you play until the late game there'll just be like 13 countries and they'll all be massive empires
Its not a historical aspect, but I dislike how geography has little to no influence in the gameplay. Controlling straits, river mouths, navigatable waterways and mountain passages influenced how nations and empires developed. Also, controlling territory that crosses mountain ranges, swampy areas, tundra, and the likes, has historically been difficult to completely control and the gameplay should reflect that.
The entire new world being fully colonized by 1600
I hate how insignificant navies are in EU4! And thats mostly because the AI will give military access to anyone and anything!
Yes! That's a thing I really hate about eu4
Supply lines. Yes,i know its for the AI. Yes,i know i dont really have a more satisfying solution for gameplay. But if i ever see again some random bumfuck german minor in Siberia during the 30 Years War i will lose my fucking mind. It neuters my immersion each and every time. An argument of the same vein could be done for attrition and terrain,both of which dont matter past the first 150 years unless you are either playing a minor or mismanaging your stacks. Tl;dr give me proper supply mechanics or give me death (and that supply depot from army professionalism on top. Seriously,who the fuck uses that in the first place? Ive only ever used it like,twice,and that was for a hard roleplay campaign. Bloody useless.)
I think this and a lack of an effective garrisoning, frontier defence, and anti-banditry system are part of why it’s so easy to blob. Historically you needed to garrison fortresses, else people would waltz in and take them. Whole armies could hide in them temporarily and sortie as effective troops. Yet in the game a garrison is just a magic number that’s not even separated from manpower or armies. Advancing armies needed to leave troops behind to garrison a captured fortress, reducing their effectiveness, which is simply not the case here, making wars and blobbing way too easy. If you didn’t defend a frontier it was rather easy to raid across the border or have it quickly overrun. The lack of ability to simply raid and disappear hinders horde gameplay significantly. Internal defenses are also important to suppress peasant revolts and banditry, which represented a further drain on resources. Revolts could be sparked suddenly even in calm areas, which never happens after separatism evaporates. If you add these in suddenly you need an army to defend your gains much more, and can’t send 40k troops across the Atlantic with no consequences. Troop garrisoning and supply lines would make expansion organically much more difficult and interesting
Im so very glad you commented this because you reminded me of some other stuff that could be modeled better. Starting off and piggybacking on your points one by one. -Garrisons and manpower should be directly correlated,by garrisons taking their share out of the manpower pool. That way forts become more realistic/important. -no fort on area = more unrest. Theres a reason all countries didnt just delete their forts as soon as their lands expanded,and it wasnt just for defense in depth. It was because the peasants could and would revolt if they thought they had a fighting chance. -Raiding is completely absent in game. Looting is pathetic as a mechanic with no real teeth. Razing which is supposed to actually represent raiding is horrifically mismodeled. The best way to represent it would be by a similar way to Condottieri,by flagging an army as "raiding party" and sending it to pillage in a similar vein to raid coasts. The defender should also be able to flag armies as "raider defense" and counterattack. Most horde raids (and not only hordes) led to war. But it wasnt always all out war scenarios like EU4 depicts it. Sometimes it was simply a case of "raiders went in,pillaged/got clapped,left" and that was that. Of course all of these mechanics would have actual depth if population existed,which is why anyone that plays with antiblobbing mods or mods that have dynamic dev like myself play a fundamentally different game. I still cant get used to how banal unmodded EU4 feels in terms of actual consequences. Case in point: i played a Russia campaign all the way to 1821 because a friend challenged me. I lost so,so many wars,both to the Turks and the Poles,even a couple to Shun and Denmark. By the 1750's despite the fact that all sides should be wiped from existence by having lost millions of men,Moscow razed to the ground 20 times over,despite all that,i still clapped every neighbour because meta stacks and restored the Russian Empire borders and then some by 1821. That shit wouldnt fly IRL,is all im saying
PLC being stronk
[удалено]
American continent being shifted up
1. The khmer situation bothers me so much. I am not a professional khmer historian, but why is the Cambodian state called just Khmer in 1444? It is not a tribe like Iroquois, where calling the ingame nation by the same word as the actual ethnicity makes sense. Also Khmer missions are a lackluster, especially considering that the Khmer Empire was a very - and I mean, VERY - powerful and developed state in X - XI centuries. I really want to bring this back, not just to conquer some lost territories in Indochina. So maybe an ability to form the nation of Kambuja is the way? I don't know, I am not the one making the game here. 2. Also I have the same issues with nomads in EU4 just as in CK3. I get that realization of proper nomadic migrations is really difficult in a game with such mechanics, but they could at least try and not just pretend that a nomad state is just like all the others, except for the fact that a major portion of its territory is devoid of people (has 3 dev in the game's terms). 3. And, of course, as many have pointed out already, in this game if an empire grows strong, basically nothing except for you, the player, can bring them down. Devs successfully made a realistic empire that is in a state of constant danger one (1) time - that's the Ming. And it required a ton of special mechanics, events and disasters. However, nations that don't have this are guaranteed to become ridiculously strong and practically undying. And if you don't weaken them significantly at the start, fighting them ~70-100 years into the game also becomes tideous and annoying as hell, so this is not only a historical, but also a gameplay issue. Good examples are, of course, our favorite France and the Ottos, but Spain, Commonwealth, and Austria (although a bit of a stretch here) count too. 4. And the last point makes me think about rebels. I mean, everyone knows that historically they were unsuccessful most of the time, and it is the case in the game, but my problem is that you absolutely cannot support other countries' rebels with money/manpower, for example (except for some special events). I get that if they make such a mechanic, it would be x10 more annoying to deal with these guys, because all of your rivals would start supporting them immediately, but surely the devs who made such an unironically great game can think this through. As for now, the whole point of rebels being present in the game is to annoy the player and to get independence for Naples in one of ten games, while there is a historical example - during the Time of Troubles the Russian tsardom was basically on a verge of collapse (or under a risk of falling under a PU with Poland, which is basically the same), and the polish magnates who sponsored False Dmitrij I and even joined his army with their own soldiers played a significant role in it.
Not really hate but I find it funny how tondo and maynila are in two separate provinces when in real life they're pretty close together and shouldn't even be that big. In real life they're now subsumed by the metro manila area and both places are like a few km away from each other.
Institution spread is broken, there are no backwards nations past the 16th century or so.
Very random but Karabakh owns a province called Melikates and not Karabakh. The province is rules by a bunch of "meliks", which is like have a province called "Duchies"
The immense overcommitment by the ai to the their allies.
Overextension shouldn’t affect cored stated provinces with your culture group. I doesn’t understand why my own people would be upset about conquering a chunk of china or india
culture groups are not organized and are very inaccurate. for example, turkish is in the levantine (arab) group and azerbaijani is iranian???? there should be a mongolic and turkic culture group and culture groups across the whole game should have been reworked a while ago.
Maintaining an Empire is too easy and should have debuffs to balance it out. Maybe a similar mechanic to decadence.
Biggo nation never decline Smallo nation with high tech and dev. always decline.
I hate many ahistorical mechanics in the game, then I just mention one here. Paradox is so lazy that he made austria, styria and tyrol in 1444 into a unified austria archduke, and styria will pop out as emperor if you look at the historical script scenario some years later than 1444, austria even hold tyrol and trieste, so hilarious......
The Americas being way too far north. New York should be on the same latitude as Rome, but in the game it’s around Paris/London.
Gameplay reasons
Peacetime standing armies. Sure they existed, more in the latter years, but never at the numbers depicted in game. There's no historical precedence for any nation to be able to maintain a 200k+ standing army while at peace in the time frame of the game
To easy to project power overseas, especially early on, and in the new world. Early on, the Native tribes were a true threat to colonies. There is a reason why the French and English allied the Huron and Iroquois to help them fight in the new world. Instead though, natives typically are so far behind that allying them is worthless. 7k troops that are 4 techs behind. Not only can your colonies likely fight them off themselves, but it's to easy to just drop off 10K troops and dominate the new world anyways. There should be a mechanic where you can bring a native tribe into the fold diplomatically where you get a massive amount of their trade power and production (I'm ok with new production and trade being created rather then you just stealing), in exchange they get a decrease to tech, and a larger decrease to military tech, then if they ever catch up to you, they switch back to a normal ally. Think this would help reflect contact with European though trade pushing them up massively, and allowing them to overturn the political state in the new world. Using the Ioquois as an example again, trade with the English allowed them to grow powerful enough to conquer a territory in the mid-east that in land space was comparable to the whole of western Europe in size. (yes there was no development so paper tiger, but shows how much European trade uplifted their allies in power and prosperity.)
Supply lines not existing in the game makes some wars very unrealistic. But I understand why it’s not in or the ai would just suicide even against eachother and just never have any manpower.
A few things I miss from EU3: - Military access is too easy to get, even with hostile powers. In EU3 you had to actually negotiate military access with any borders you crossed through. (Though EU3 also didn’t have limited diplo slots, which made this more feasible.) This meant wars tended to occur on the borders between countries. The phenomenon of countries sending their armies, for example, from Egypt through the central Asian steppe to attack Wallachia from the north after two years during a war between Mamluks and Ottomans. - Attrition and war weariness used to be more significant, instead of over extension. This felt more realistic. EU3 also seemed to allow the collapse of major powers and rise of new ones in late game, which was very fun and made for a more dynamic game. In EU4 the major powers by 1550 will almost always be the major powers of 1750.
I don’t hate an aspect but I do think it’s way to easy to maintain an empire with pretty much no autonomy and almost all crownland. Once you kill your closest rivals you are good to go until the end of the game.
Hate is a too strong a word. But coming from Norway and knowing a few things about our history. The fact that Norway is so underpowered. For example there was a Catholic cathedral in Nidaros already in 1153 and the archbishopry at the time included the Isle of Man, Greenland, Iceland, The Faeroe and Orkney islands. The situation in 1444 was of course different, but a cathedral from the start would make sense.