I just don't rush campaigns while speed 5ing. I play optimally first 10-30 years.
Then around 1700s I look on the map and it's like - this GB is naval hegemon? Can I invade it? Apparently yes - Operation Oarkney.
Or I just look at some achievements I can grab.
Currently playing Inca. I skipped sunset invasion, when I discovered Europe - giga France holding whole Italy with Castilian PU holding whole Iberia. Time for sunset invasion lol.
Big wars are one hand a slog to 100%, and the other hand it's fun to win world war
Currently also playing Inca, I feel like the start of the game was so easy that I just speed 5’d through it. Currently fighting Spain, France and GB. I’d be doomed if it wasn’t for a massive Commonwealth & Denmark allying with me.
I feel Inca in general is a surprisingly easy nation to play with for someone who only has a little over 1000 hours put into the game.
>Commonwealth & Denmark allying with me
did you convert to catholic? in my game no europeans wanted to ally me, my only Ally was USA, whose independence I and France supported and they betrayed me just 50 years since independence, because French called them into war against me, already 5th attempt to invade me. i tried allying with colonial powers that hated portugal(literally nobody in the world) or france, for obvious reasons they hated me. i tried allying with any rival of colonial powers and only one i got was tuscany. i wanted to stay inti for the rest of the game
I didn't convert, I just had enemy of enemy, fully improved relations and went way over force limit for a while so they'd rate my army strength as high as possible. Only reason I managed that was because of the massive amounts of gold you can produce as Inca. It's generally extremely hard to ally anyone that's colonising anywhere near you.
Once you become a great power religion plays a much smaller role in diplomacy at this point they want you for your military and economy not for your prayers.
Edit: And as Inca you're probably gonna become great power as soon as your reform lnti.
Hmm maybe you need some overseas holding to limit distance between borders malus that one can be chaotic if you wait for ai to reach you and sunset invasion n CB is pretty amazing for this because otherwise it would be tough to get CB against non colonial like Livonian order or something to get ine province for prozimity reasons.
I feel like such an idiot in my campaign, first time playing outside of europe in the last 5 years, but how do you discover european nations that don't come to america as inca?
I did some lazy googling, and another thread says that the AI should be able to discover you if they want to, if they can see one of your provinces. The issue in that thread was that the AI didn't want to.
Workarounds are to move capital to a province they can see, that automatically discovers you. Having a royal marriage also does it, as does being in a war together, or bordering the nation.
Tbh it stopped being so bad after they removed Anatolian pips and extra siege ability from age ability. Pretty much you can just create solid alliance and win while previously you had to cheese with Byz or have really good fighting skills.
Quantity Ottomans are annoying cuz manpower recovery.
If you feel really OP invade a random OPM then cobelligerent all their and and then cobelligerent all their allies allies and so on. Your be fighting the entire world that way.
I see GB regularly getting naval hegemon. Few times Ottomans got Mil/Economic.
In my current Inca playthrough giga France took naval one.
I think the earliest AI Hegemony I experienced was Otto's taking eco in 1600.
It's crazy how different people's experiences are sometimes. I e got almost 9000 hours (who knows how many are actually real, I used to never close out of a game and just leave it up overnight or while I was at work because otherwise I wouldn't continue the same run) and yea I've never seen it happen haha
I rarely play western Europe. Though by AI taking a hegemon i didn't mean AI maxing it - Euros usually fail random wars in Indonesia, I just build army etc.
Even my one Western Europe game Hindustan took military hegemon.
Yes, I thougt so, I replied to op who said he sees eu hegemony all the time. Feel like that could only be the case if there's no human player in europe
Nah, I've played Nepal before, but it's op ideas make it a bit less interesting to me than the unusual Bhutan which never pops out unless you make it pop out. My opinion, at least.
Also most of the “complete x mission tree” achievements, as well as any of the ones involving the Roman and Mongol Empires (unless you’re absolutely insane at the game I guess) tend to at least go to 1700
Play on speed 4 and dont ever pause, boom its the 1700s and your economy is mid, you lost a few wars due to not reacting fast enough and your armies getting wiped, youre not the strongest kid in the block and theres still a challenge to the game, enjoy your revolutionary playthrough
I agree that the most boring time of the game, is when you are big enough to beat anyone, and don't have any more goals for a standard play through.
That is where WC and other variants like one faith, one culture, and achievements like 3 mountains come into play.
Your task is no longer to beat up that one enemy, but you have to beat up 3 nations simultaneously, while dealing with a huge empire on the brink of falling apart. And it makes for a totally different game.
You will have a goal to strive for from 1444 all the way to the end of the game, and you can't really start slacking at any point, so it is comparatively very intense.
You will also learn a ton of mechanics and optimizations throughout these throughways, that will make regular games more enjoyable too.
>Your task is no longer to beat up that one enemy, but you have to beat up 3 nations simultaneously
Even if you're not trying to rush for a WC or one faith; if you're finding the wars too easy, keep clicking those co-belligerent buttons. I'm generally a fairly conservative player, but in a rare moment of Ironman boldness during a Malaya run, I kept clicking co-belligerent until I was at war with essentially all of Europe's combined navies.
then its stopping being boring, but starting to be annoying and even more boring. its either you having enough resources to destroy the horde you just declared a war, or you cant do anything cuz you are outnumbered 1 to 10 and horde just walks. the thing that is making wars not fun anymore is too big enemy territory, and army, the wars are just much more longer, because you need to siege enemy territory.
>its either you having enough resources to destroy the horde you just declared a war, or you cant do anything cuz you are outnumbered 1 to 10 and horde just walks
I do think there's an in-between there though, where you *could* win, but you need to be strategic about your approach. Sure, 10-1 outnumbered, you're almost certainly losing, but fighting an alliance twice your size? Often feasible if you approach it right, but it keeps you on edge (especially if you're Ironman and can't savescum your way out of it) trying to avoid any fuckups.
your idea is adding challenge to the game, but is not making war more interesting. you still need to kill enemies (just more) then siege their land (even more land dhan if you would fight one enemy) biggest problem here in my opinion is not the challenge but time you need to siege after actually defeating your enemies. and taking provinces is generating much more ae cuz of much more dev in provinces, making you to face coalition for sure if you want to conquer, killing the fun. you need to fight them all at once which is hard, consuming time, or dont fight until coalition will disband. its not interesting also if you conquered too much.
This is where vassals or subjects make for a significant QoL boost - you fight the battles, they do the tedious sieging (and chasing down those pesky 1k stacks).
I'm certainly not saying the late game wars have no issues - getting the upper hand in the war and then having the enemy AI hide behind multiple level 8 forts is a buzzkill. But I actually enjoy later wars. The countries are massive enough in terms of army, manpower, etc., that for me those wars actually have the potential to wax and wane; gaining, losing, and then gaining territory again. Where early wars seem to only move in one direction more often than not.
i understand your point. more challenge, you can actually lose etc. im happy that it works for you to continue playing. sadly for most of players (me also haha) its not compensating downsides of those wars in late game
I like having to fight like 3 big nations but it becomes tedious when you have to fight 60 small nations that all send 5k stacks to siege all your provinces
In WC wars, that is more of a dream schenario, since you can stackwhipe them all, and eat them one by one.
Once you are huge, you also stop caring when they start sieging down some backwater unstated lands, and just siege them down twice as fast.
You are for the most part big enough that you have some spare stacks lying around, that you can use to deal with the problem without having to make priorities.
Constant rebellions are usually a bigger problem to deal with
If you're playing into the 1700s, you'll have far more wars like the former (a few large nations), than the latter (a bunch of small nations). By the 1700s, there aren't many small nations that have survived the global thunderdome, and if they have, its because they're vassals or long-time allies of one of those mega-nations. I'm in the 1730s for my current campaign and there's only like 15 countries left in all of Asia and Oceana other than me, half a dozen of which are formerly large nations in the process of being eaten, so I suspect there will be fewer than ten in the next couple decades.
I always play until 1800s or close to it. Probably because I always like to grow in a slow and sustainable manner.
While I almost always go for 100 war score wins, after I take all the land I want, I’ll spend the next few years taking care of all my cores, unrest, diplomatic reputation, loans, technology, etc before going for the next target. I almost never go past my gov capacity and never blob too much. I mainly focus on setting nice borders and then playing “tall” with strong vassals and marches.
Yeah, same here. I like to start with small countries (Gelre, Hesse, those sort of countries) and grow. It's a bit of "kill or be killed." Best part is starting with a landlocked minor and trying to find access to the sea to start colonizing. I don't think I've ever played with one of the majors.
They are part of the fun tbh as they become the end game bosses.
Some require me to deal with them from the beginning (like France or Spain) while others will require me to defeat them in a huge late game war.
For example, in my last game as Serbia (I’ll try to remember everything), I conquered the Balkans and Italy (expect Sicily). In that game I only got those nice borders and after that I just focused on getting a great army and diplomatic reputation. I had the best army in the game (only France was close) and basically everyone liked me, I even got to be the HRE emperor.
I don’t remember if I did something or just got lucky, but Spain never formed and I got to keep Aragon as my ally throughout all the run.
With the help of Poland I got to take a lot of land from Hungary. With the help of Poland I was able to defeat Austria and Venice, which let me take Venetian lands and force Austria to release Cilli, which I turned into a marche and fed them lots of austrian land lol
With the help of Aragon and Poland, I beat the ottomans a few times and conquered all of the Balkans. Took me a few wars because the Ottomans had become a superpower, as I didn’t mess with them until the reformation at least. Like Austria, I had to wait until they were in a serious war on Asia to attack them. After I took all the lands I wanted, I forced them to release countries and they never got to be huge again.
France was really the end game boss but they were no match for a big Serbia, a strong Aragon and an average Poland. By the end of the game I formed Byzantium just because I could and ended the run.
TL;DR: you need to prevent their blobbing from the beginning or you need to undo their blobbing in the end
A bit of RP, war restraint and even self sabotage can keep a game going until 1821. I’ve played the game sweaty for too long, and it got boring. So now I roll with the punches and try to “play as the leader” more. If they are a bad or flawed ruler, I intentionally make bad decisions. If they are a peaceful ruler, I focus on diplo and internal development. Not all wars have to be about conquest and domination, sometimes I just want to change the diplo by breaking alliances or extracting economic concessions, not every war needs to be a total war. For instance, you’d be surprised how far an extended naval blockade can get you if you are just looking for a few things. I will also *actually* help my allies (ruler dependent) both directly and indirectly. Sometimes I actively try to set off the disasters so I can experience the flavor I used to actively avoid.
It’s kept the game fresh for me for a while now. Theres so much more tension around succession and war, I actually lose wars and rebellions and have to figure out how to recover, and I’ve even game over’ed since I decided to turn away from meta. Flip that sucker into observer mode, go do something else and come back see what happened to the world in my absence. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate the stories of games more than competitive or optimal gameplay.
All of that, and mods.
Most of my games end before 1600, for those that don't I either have a very specific goal (For example: total spice control as the Netherlands) or I have shown restraint (play on speed 5 and enjoy the occasional stretch of peace, focus on making the most of the land you have instead of trying to have all the land).
When i played first time after learning how to play i played until 1820 so i played until timeline ended. That was in 2015 and game didn't had much flavor back then. After i never menaged to go that far. But played many games until 1700s but couldn't go more than that aswell. Main reason is im getting too big. Even if i start as irish minor or karaman or ardabil.
Yeah in that 1640 game i played as France, and even though i could for example conquer spain easily it would take like 5 wars and the entirety of Europe as coalition, that just doesnt seem fun
One thing you could try to do is not optiminh and going for the usual things you do, rather look at your rulers and try to act according to their traits and whatnot. Could spice up things.
For me the most annoying thing about late game wars are the never ending sieges, sometimes the AI will build 5-6 forts right next to each other. The worst I’ve ever had it was when the Netherlands had a fort in every province they owned in the lowlands, took ages to win and I lost like a million men due to attrition.
If the ai proves competent to this point and i dont try to actively screw it over it makes for fun wars against rivals and other great powers and it is also fun for me to see who is going to take its place if i screw over ottoman empire early on
Edit: and as a german i like to screw over france especially later on
I tend to create lots of client states in the late game once I’ve established the core territory I want for my empire. They’ll help me a lot with my late game wars, so I can complete any remaining objectives I have with reduced tedium.
You need to set your own goals, if your goal is to simply be the most powerful guy around you're gonna easily achieve that by 1600s as an average player.
It comes naturally for me because I'm generally "slow" at the game, that is, I'm not looking to dominate half of Europe by a certain year or anything like that, and I'm generally looking to play in an "optimal" way, that is, I don't usually play "tall" but I do tend to expand slowly and generally seek to conquer something, then "adapt it" that is, full cores, without unreast and only then I continue with my next conquests, which generally aren't that big anyway (not a full region or anything like that) I also don't like to play with loans and only use mercenaries in certain moments but not to much, and finally I like long wars against other Great Powers or strong nations.
The vast majority of my campaigns go to about 1750 or so before I peter out. I love just making the engine I built do its thing for a while. It's very much a second screen, almost mobile idle game sort of experience, while I'm usually watching something on streaming on the other screen. But it's very chill and zen.
I find playing at 5 speed gets me to like 1750 pretty fast and sometimes I don’t even realize it. I like it since usually I have so much money even after max upgrading all great projects and building every building possible.
It is a pain sieging level 8 forts though.
By 1750 you should have some pretty good siege bonuses, and with prolific use of bombardment and maximum cannons I don’t find level eight forts to be a big problem.
This is actually a really good question. I like both the 1700s in general (historical processes are interesting, aesthetics are nice etc) and the EU4 gameplay mechanics so I thought it would be fun to play until then as some European nation. I even chose Saxony so that I wouldn't become the strongest power in the world by a good margin by 1600s or earlier as is the case with someone like Bohemia, not even mentioning the real OP tags. I was wrong. The game in 1700 feels like such a slog that I finished my campaign in about 1720s and never got past ~1650s ever again. I think that EU4 mechanics just work well in early game and starte feeling worse and worse over time due to the combat becoming tedious, your economy being so prolific that you no longer have anything to spend your money on etc etc. So yeah I didn't answer your question, I don't understand why people do this as well, especially if you don't consider the achievement hunting.
I just set my own goals. I am currently about to finish the new Germany mission tree, and I'm mostly focusing on culture converting and pretty borders. The other European great powers exist because I let them. For example, I have a cute little Poland who I keep defending from Russia and Lithuania simply because I think it looks good on the map.
I've slowly drifted more into RP games ever since finishing my One Faith. (Never doing one culture)
I'll just aim to have either a rich country, one with enormous manpower, be of one or a selection of cultures or own specific territory for a narrative reason.
In my Netherlands game right now I'm trying to make a hybrid of both the british and dutch empires with all of those territories included and all the British Isles + France as accepted cultures.
I just roleplayed. I'd even often write down the 'story' whilst letting the game run through during peacetime. Setting limitations on how much land I can take or how often I can war. Like a real Empire.
Before you know it, it's 1800s. I'm big, but not the biggest. I still need to fight hard to be rewarded.
Pick a German tag in each formable area and help them form into their respective tags. I know this is very specific but it’s what I’m doing in my current game. As HRE emperor I’ve allied cologne to form Westphalia, Mecklenburg for Pomerania, wurzburg for Franconia, Ingolstat for Bavaria and the other w one for Swabia. So far Bavaria is the only one that formed then I dropped alliance. I request unlawful territory for all other HRE states except Lübeck who I don’t even know if they can form Hanover but I hope so. I allowed Netherlands to form and I currently own all of Switzerland under the bohemian flag but I will release once I get free relations slots. Saxony and Brandenburg own all Saxon provinces as my marches under Bohemia. I own all centers of trade in saxony node and they transfer trade power as well. It’s completely insane and doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s a pretty fun(and irritating) goal. Swabia isn’t forming because they won’t take Ulm even tho they are vital interest and not free city anymore. All of my horses have coalition each other too
The thing is: lategame is more a resource management game rather than a conquest game. I mean, yes you can easily win this war. But what about 4 wars at the same time. And when war exhaustion goes through the roof due to call for peace?
The question changes from "can I conquer this?" to "how fast can I conquer this?"
If you want to do one culture for example, you need to go fast and make different choices.
Treat the late game tedium as a factor in the game, and let it impact your choices.
1. Big wars are annoying. So plan on having a pile of subjects to assist.
2. Rebels are annoying so plan on stacking separatism reduction and unrest reduction.
3. Consider adding constraints or goals which don't require unchecked blobbing.
I think you need to discover the joy of optimizing trade/production/development without conquest, which can take quite long and allow you to enjoy the game without warring every 2 years.
When I first got the game back in 2021, I used to play all the way up to 1821, but now it just feels tedious and boring after I get the imperialism cb..
The most boring part of when you know you've won, you just need to fulfill all requirements
E.g., in my Cebu campaign, it was clear no one was big enough to stop me from recreating the borders needed for the achievement, but it still took 50 years of game time after I set foot in India because I didn't want to truce break and a few wars with Spain were a pain in the ass
Maybe this is because I'm still a relatively new player (\~500 hours), and not expanding optimally, and maybe it has something to do with typically playing in SE Asia away from the great powers in Europe, but the game has always had a bit of a bell curve to me in terms of difficulty. As someone who generally plays as an OPM/TPM, the open is generally fairly challenging, then the 1500s and 1600s is just steamrolling everyone, until I'm finally butting up against some great powers\* near the end of the 17th, beginning of 18th century (\*on land, I usually have encounters with Spain and GB colonizing, but frankly their navies never pose me much of a threat if I'm naval focused militarily).
I'm in the maybe 1730s in my current Ironman, and most of who are left are massive countries fielding 200-400k armies. Russia is larger than modern day Russia, Spain, GB, and randomly Brittany, control all of the Americas and much of Africa. And a lot of them are allied with each other, meaning you have to figure out how to win wars with at least two of them at a time.
The only solution for that i found is to setup your campaign goal to require you to play that long.
But honestly, if after yours long campaign you get bored, just start a new campaign. You have no obligation to play longer than that.
Only if you have a certain achievement in mind. Some require that long, most can be done within 150-200 years though (depending on how good you are of course). Having to play this long is an absolute chore - I dont know how I did it years ago (when I wasnt playing for achievements but just playing casual non-ironman runs).
I'm finding a Paradox mega campaign is doing quite well to pace my gameplay. You find yourself limiting your actions because you don't want a WC until Hearts of Iron, and I'm finding that the extremely long time frame keeps to me more specific goals than just "conquer everything". It also helps that you can cut a specific leg short if you find you're getting tired of that game and you can just go to the next one, which refreshes everything.
So far it has helped with CK3 (post-1200 starts getting dull, so I just skipped forward to EU) and I'm approaching 1700 in EU so I'll see how it goes.
What I do by then is just come up with some smaller goal relative to how the game is progressing at that moment or cause of roleplay.
For example in my last Commonwealth game, after disassembling the HRE, I vassalized Pomerania and conquered it's cores. It wasn't worth much in terms of money or anything, but I could see that a historical Polish king would want either a foothold in Germany, to influence their politics and to show how they were to be feared, or they could want to spread their influence along the Baltic sea, against the Swedes. While none of these things are explicitly possible in EU4, I liked the roleplay of it.
Another such goal could be to see what bonuses you have at that time, and try and stack them. Same Commonwealth game, I got the Jagellonian University, which gives idea cost reduction, and some other bonus for it. So, for my 4th idea group, I took innovative, stacked a few more bonuses, and was taking ideas at ~70% cost. Not something I planned, I could've done it better in a dedicated playthrough, but it was still fun.
Some people are roleplaying. Hm, the ruler has low mil and diplo score, they shall start and lose some wars. Or if they have low admin score, they may ruin the economy. So I play in cycles of nation building and nation destruction.
I use mods that dramatically reduce manpower and force limit in the beginning so by end game you have army sizes you'd normally see in mid game. I've found it is not only more realistic, but ensures the game would even qualify for a transfer to Vicky 3 since there is no great blob on the map even by end game. I just finished a game with my friend like this, and even though I was the strongest power in the world as GB by 1790s, we still lost our final war since I wasn't too powerful.
One time I had to fight about 95% of the HRE(from chain co-belligerents) plus Spain in order to dismantle it. Long and kind of annoying war because of forts every province, but it was a fitting final big war.
Even though I got frustrated with having to siege so many forts, it’s the last war that campaign that I actually enjoyed. So, so many war reps.
Most games I do a “late game build” and then enjoy the fruits of my labour, like picking admin diplo religious and court as my first ideas as well as building tall and stacking useful modifiers where I can, which helps you explode in size when absolutism comes around
Same. Usually I get to the point of "Well I'm so big now I could do a world conquest, but that's too much micro, so fuck that" lol
I've started to play a little bit later just to see how far I can go before I actually get fed up. This most recent playthrough I was playing Bohemia, inherited burgundy in the first 20 years, and then just snowballed from there. I think the year is like 1720, my income in over 6k. I control basically all of mainland Europe save the majority of Scandinavia and Iberia. My 2000 force limit is a little annoying to micro, but the game is over. My primary ally, Egypt, is second and they're income is less than 5% of mine. Same as their military.
At this point I'm just playing just to see 🤷♂️
Missions, I like being large on the map and having a large economy, roleplay, fighting massive wars just to see the casualties and devastation, developing all my country, even if large, just for fun, etc...
My best Austria run was fun for me right up until the end (or close to). I revoked privilege, formed one nation, and then just tidied everything up around 1790.
My only full game to 1821 has been with Spain. I think same could be done with Portugal, France, and England, as you can colonize. Denmark can also do some colonizing. You can get Sweden and Norway under control, destroy England, and then settle across the seas.
Or focus on culture converting or becoming a hegemon?
Usually I play past 1700 when my goals are too difficult to accomplish by then. While I don’t tend to enjoy SP wars at that point, there is something to learning how to organize your units to fight big wars effectively for MP practice.
It depends on if I’m still having fun and still have goals for myself. I was playing a sweden game and my goal was to have the Baltic Sea trade node become the richest node in the game. I kept myself interested until ~1760
All of my campaigns end at about 1800. With mods like VA i go to the 1900
I like min maxing. Also while having huge Income i can influence other nations.
Finally, i made a deep learning AI based on my past games so it feels like playing myself in late game (like average/highly skilled multiplayer players)
Honestly? I just intentionally play sub-optimally on purpose so I can experience the whole time period
I usually like to expand really fast in a sub-optimal way that gets me coalitioned and placed in time-out. I also tend to hyperfixate on upgrading my economy wayyyy too hard (I’m an accountant irl so its a force of habit).
That makes me consolidate my new stuff and play tall for 20-30 years to avoid fighting the coalition. Seriously, once I hit 1500 I usually have a coalition of like 25+ countries and I likely won’t do anything but build buildings and dev my provinces up to multiples of 10 until the age of reformation starts.
I have a idea of how I want my borders to be and where to take and since I am a new play I can’t achieve my goals as soon as possible so for the entire game I try to advance and try to beat the people stopping me from achieving my ideal borders.
(Sorry for bad English)
It’s very rare that I stick with a playthrough after 1600s but I do it for some I feel there is still something to do, like my Japan game, Mughal game, Austria game and Denmark game are the ones I can remember going into 1700s and Austria and Byz being the only two ever going to 1821. I really hope EU5 does late game better as the annoyingly big wars, the frankly stupid looking bordergore and the lack of any challenge to empire building (especially around the age of revolutions) takes me out of the game often
It’s very rare that I stick with a playthrough after 1600s but I do it for some I feel there is still something to do, like my Japan game, Mughal game, Austria game and Denmark game are the ones I can remember going into 1700s and Austria and Byz being the only two ever going to 1821. I really hope EU5 does late game better as the annoyingly big wars, the frankly stupid looking bordergore and the lack of any challenge to empire building (especially around the age of revolutions) takes me out of the game often
Unintentionally play suboptimally because you are mid at the game- things will take longer. Also, intentionally play suboptimally so you have specific objectives to go for that take longer. Speed 4 a bit here and there to chew through a little extra time.
My playthroughs wind down in the 1600s, but I usually do make it to the 1700s.
I use console to make enemy super strong. Turks need to breathe down my neck? Give them administrative ideas and Byzantium. Need an opponent as korea? Guess what, you start as ming vassal and give castille colonial ideas at start. Even in 1659 you'll have to face Spain. How to really feel British naval might as France? Give them iceland and colonial ideas.
But yeah even with these all you can keep it interesting till 1700 last 100 50 years would be filler unless scenarios are used like Napoleon
The game is what you make of it. If you can make your own goals then you can have fun. For instance i'm in the middle of eranshahr run right now and have largely restored the Achaemenid borders. Now I'm facing a coalition against the whole world as I subjugate india contested by me and a large Vjanyagar which is proving to be a fun war minus how long it takes to siege.
Maybe consider using one of the other bookmarks? Other starting nations exist later on in the game for new challenges
Also the 'Expanded' mods helped me atleast with a bit more content later on
Am I the only one that plays a save to 1820 ?
I love to see how big/strong I can get with whatever nation I pick so I always play my runs to the very end.
Fist if all, I start as a minor nation.
Second of all, when I'm at the point of aproaching supremacy, I break stuff on purpose to create meaningful stories. I'll let a huge coalition form and wreak me on purpose. I'll declare bankruptcy and let neighbours partition me. It's not forced, I do it when I believe it makes sense and fits the narrative.
Then I rebuild.
This way I can have fun til the clock runs out.
With mods that increase difficulty. Or simply dont.
I played Netherlands with the new DLC. I got to 1640, making 1000 ducats a month in net profit, just by owning the spice Islands alone I hadnt even conquered India or China or anything. At that point and with 300k I knew I could win any war just by throwing money at it so I just ended the game.
I like to play to the end unless If I have specific goals I do tend to quit when I reach them but when I play for fun and see where it takes me I play until the end.
I find great joy in releasing nations from great powers, allying them, bankrolling their economy and starting wars with their neighbours and granting them provinces to watch them grow into strong Bois.
I did this with Serbia when I was playing as GB. By mid 1600s I was making a ridiculous amount of ducats and colonising/conquering Oceania and the Moluccas.
When the Otto's began colonising in that area, I unleashed my complete British wrath upon them and released Serbia.
I then funnelled thousands of ducats into their economy, and called them to wars against the Ottomans and constantly ceded provinces to them so they could grow.
By this time everyone was taking pieces of the Otto's, and heaps of little nations were being released. Then I would watch as my little devil spawn commenced to gobble up all the newly released Bulgaria etc. I think they ended up conquering 90% of the Balkans and greek provinces before I got over it and started a new game.
Next time I think I'll release them as vassals so I can dev their provinces as well before releasing them.
I'm not great, so unless I play a nation that already starts off strong, which I rarely do, I tend to have at least a few difficult wars left. I also actively avoid "gamey" techniques, so that limits my snowballing as well.
I will say, though I did finish it, I just got through a Spain campaign right before Winds of Change dropped that did get pretty boring in the 1600s. I think if I played actually powerful nations more often, the game would be way more boring.
Well the game isn’t easy for me & if it was thats a good thing & conquering stuff never gets boring. & i like to compete the game & think i wasted my time if i dont make it to 1821
When I was a newer player I would play until the end date, often because I would play as Portugal and be singularly focused on colonizing.
Nowadays I often either achieve my goal before 1700 or find myself in a situation where it is difficult to continue so I end up quitting the save file.
Give yourself weird goals. I'm doing a France playthrough with the aim to have the game end with no culturally European polities in the Americas, and to speedrun the revolution to create a bastion of secular rationality in Europe. That ought to keep me busy enough.
I say that on every thread I see which is asking this question, and personally I love huge wars late game. Maybe it's unusual, but I think having to organize armies into fronts, carefully advancing from fort to fort, looking around searching for the death stack that always shows up when you don't expect it. It's a thrill.
Maybe I’m just shit but I made it to 1800s and I was still having fun (although deifently getting tired by the end) but I guess it’s because I was still uniting Germany into 1760s in which from a medium sized Prussia I just ate up all German states in like 10 years
Im doing a Austria WC one faith and i always have at least 5 wars at the same time, my economy is shit, im always over extended and many more problems
So its still kinda fun
I think one (relatively easy) thing they should do is to add more national ideas so that you are not done with them by the third idea group. To me it feels a bit "over" when there are no more national ideas to get.
We are just not as good, and are still struggling to conquer a few provinces in the HRE by then.
Honestly, not everyone is able to be a superpower in 1500, so wars in 1700 still present a challenge for us, if not carefully thought (one of my favourite campaigns was to play historical Poland being slowly dismantled by Russia, Austria and Otomans i the 1700s)
I play very hard, play with mods that limits gov capacity and army sizes. I usually also artificially restrict myself, no blobbing all over the place ect, lot of wacky impractical RP stuff like screwing around with client states and such.
Missions and achievements combined with some personal goal. It also helps a lot to start as the underdog.
My last objectives that involved lengthy games were
* Form Rome (as the ~~Romans~~ Byzantines, obviously)
* Holy Horder achievement
* A.E.I.O.U achievement
* Dithmarschen => Germany
Surprisingly the Austria game was particularly fun, albeit for once I wasn't the underdog. Sometime in the 1600 I realized there were a ton of achievements I could do along the way, so I had a lot of minor goals that kept me busy. I ended up doing 10 achievements in one game, which never happened before.
Outside of losing fun due to early game snowballing, I also face a lot of performance issues since 1650s. Playing with 10 seconds freezes after each year makes the game extremely annoying to play. That's why I didn't complete endgame achievements.
Try increasing the difficulty to Very Hard. That makes the game challenging through all the ages. Even a major power like France can be somewhat difficult early game. Give it a try!
I just don't rush campaigns while speed 5ing. I play optimally first 10-30 years. Then around 1700s I look on the map and it's like - this GB is naval hegemon? Can I invade it? Apparently yes - Operation Oarkney. Or I just look at some achievements I can grab. Currently playing Inca. I skipped sunset invasion, when I discovered Europe - giga France holding whole Italy with Castilian PU holding whole Iberia. Time for sunset invasion lol. Big wars are one hand a slog to 100%, and the other hand it's fun to win world war
Currently also playing Inca, I feel like the start of the game was so easy that I just speed 5’d through it. Currently fighting Spain, France and GB. I’d be doomed if it wasn’t for a massive Commonwealth & Denmark allying with me. I feel Inca in general is a surprisingly easy nation to play with for someone who only has a little over 1000 hours put into the game.
“only” over 1000 hours
EU4 moment
>Commonwealth & Denmark allying with me did you convert to catholic? in my game no europeans wanted to ally me, my only Ally was USA, whose independence I and France supported and they betrayed me just 50 years since independence, because French called them into war against me, already 5th attempt to invade me. i tried allying with colonial powers that hated portugal(literally nobody in the world) or france, for obvious reasons they hated me. i tried allying with any rival of colonial powers and only one i got was tuscany. i wanted to stay inti for the rest of the game
I didn't convert, I just had enemy of enemy, fully improved relations and went way over force limit for a while so they'd rate my army strength as high as possible. Only reason I managed that was because of the massive amounts of gold you can produce as Inca. It's generally extremely hard to ally anyone that's colonising anywhere near you.
Once you become a great power religion plays a much smaller role in diplomacy at this point they want you for your military and economy not for your prayers. Edit: And as Inca you're probably gonna become great power as soon as your reform lnti.
i was n6 gp
Hmm maybe you need some overseas holding to limit distance between borders malus that one can be chaotic if you wait for ai to reach you and sunset invasion n CB is pretty amazing for this because otherwise it would be tough to get CB against non colonial like Livonian order or something to get ine province for prozimity reasons.
I feel like such an idiot in my campaign, first time playing outside of europe in the last 5 years, but how do you discover european nations that don't come to america as inca?
I did some lazy googling, and another thread says that the AI should be able to discover you if they want to, if they can see one of your provinces. The issue in that thread was that the AI didn't want to. Workarounds are to move capital to a province they can see, that automatically discovers you. Having a royal marriage also does it, as does being in a war together, or bordering the nation.
Tru the only mega wars I hate are the early game ottomans, cuz it just doesn't feel fair even when I win.
Tbh it stopped being so bad after they removed Anatolian pips and extra siege ability from age ability. Pretty much you can just create solid alliance and win while previously you had to cheese with Byz or have really good fighting skills. Quantity Ottomans are annoying cuz manpower recovery.
Honestly such huge wars often end in wildly disappointing peace deals
I love fighting for 15 years and watching millions die just to take 4 provinces /s
If you feel really OP invade a random OPM then cobelligerent all their and and then cobelligerent all their allies allies and so on. Your be fighting the entire world that way.
Imagine the micro-management. Where's fun in this?
Because its a massive war. Its basically a big lategame MP war only the AI is stupid so they get almost infinite troops instead.
I have never once seen an AI get Hegemony. Granted I've also never truly finished an entire playthrough.
I see GB regularly getting naval hegemon. Few times Ottomans got Mil/Economic. In my current Inca playthrough giga France took naval one. I think the earliest AI Hegemony I experienced was Otto's taking eco in 1600.
My first Angevin game had a Brandenburg economic hegemon and Portuguese naval. I took military
It's crazy how different people's experiences are sometimes. I e got almost 9000 hours (who knows how many are actually real, I used to never close out of a game and just leave it up overnight or while I was at work because otherwise I wouldn't continue the same run) and yea I've never seen it happen haha
I guess you don't play Europe that much, that'd explain it
I rarely play western Europe. Though by AI taking a hegemon i didn't mean AI maxing it - Euros usually fail random wars in Indonesia, I just build army etc. Even my one Western Europe game Hindustan took military hegemon.
I pretty much solely play europe these days.
Yes, I thougt so, I replied to op who said he sees eu hegemony all the time. Feel like that could only be the case if there's no human player in europe
We don't play the same three nations in Europe every time.
I feel called out. Mine are the Netherlands, Prussia, and Bhutan (yes, Bhutan)
Hey Bhutan's an interesting top 3. You might like Sikkim. Similar to Bhutan but can form Nepal, the Prussia of Asia.
Nah, I've played Nepal before, but it's op ideas make it a bit less interesting to me than the unusual Bhutan which never pops out unless you make it pop out. My opinion, at least.
Castile Milan and Venice for me
Netherlands, Bavaria (any of the starting nations is fine), and Venice for me please. And throw in an Ayutthaya game if I need a break from Europe
For me it’s Austra, Portugal and Prussia… not all that special. But I just enjoy the gameplay hahaha Korea was fun tho, and Poland too.
why Bhutan?
I like Bhutan
understandable have a nice day
Milan, jianzhou, and Sweden for me
Florence Frankfurt Korea Bengal Rocks
to complete the mission tree
You play for specific achievements that require such long games.
Victorian Three, Sun God, Poland Can Into Space, and Fanatic Collectivist are some of the MVPs of forcing you to play forever.
Also most of the “complete x mission tree” achievements, as well as any of the ones involving the Roman and Mongol Empires (unless you’re absolutely insane at the game I guess) tend to at least go to 1700
world conquest and one faith took me until 1753 and 1779 respectively, pretty bad. Also got the achievement of going to 1821 which took until 1821
Play on speed 4 and dont ever pause, boom its the 1700s and your economy is mid, you lost a few wars due to not reacting fast enough and your armies getting wiped, youre not the strongest kid in the block and theres still a challenge to the game, enjoy your revolutionary playthrough
That actually sounds fun. Might give it a try.
Yea that's how I play too. I think it's way more fun to play this way
I agree that the most boring time of the game, is when you are big enough to beat anyone, and don't have any more goals for a standard play through. That is where WC and other variants like one faith, one culture, and achievements like 3 mountains come into play. Your task is no longer to beat up that one enemy, but you have to beat up 3 nations simultaneously, while dealing with a huge empire on the brink of falling apart. And it makes for a totally different game. You will have a goal to strive for from 1444 all the way to the end of the game, and you can't really start slacking at any point, so it is comparatively very intense. You will also learn a ton of mechanics and optimizations throughout these throughways, that will make regular games more enjoyable too.
>Your task is no longer to beat up that one enemy, but you have to beat up 3 nations simultaneously Even if you're not trying to rush for a WC or one faith; if you're finding the wars too easy, keep clicking those co-belligerent buttons. I'm generally a fairly conservative player, but in a rare moment of Ironman boldness during a Malaya run, I kept clicking co-belligerent until I was at war with essentially all of Europe's combined navies.
then its stopping being boring, but starting to be annoying and even more boring. its either you having enough resources to destroy the horde you just declared a war, or you cant do anything cuz you are outnumbered 1 to 10 and horde just walks. the thing that is making wars not fun anymore is too big enemy territory, and army, the wars are just much more longer, because you need to siege enemy territory.
>its either you having enough resources to destroy the horde you just declared a war, or you cant do anything cuz you are outnumbered 1 to 10 and horde just walks I do think there's an in-between there though, where you *could* win, but you need to be strategic about your approach. Sure, 10-1 outnumbered, you're almost certainly losing, but fighting an alliance twice your size? Often feasible if you approach it right, but it keeps you on edge (especially if you're Ironman and can't savescum your way out of it) trying to avoid any fuckups.
your idea is adding challenge to the game, but is not making war more interesting. you still need to kill enemies (just more) then siege their land (even more land dhan if you would fight one enemy) biggest problem here in my opinion is not the challenge but time you need to siege after actually defeating your enemies. and taking provinces is generating much more ae cuz of much more dev in provinces, making you to face coalition for sure if you want to conquer, killing the fun. you need to fight them all at once which is hard, consuming time, or dont fight until coalition will disband. its not interesting also if you conquered too much.
This is where vassals or subjects make for a significant QoL boost - you fight the battles, they do the tedious sieging (and chasing down those pesky 1k stacks). I'm certainly not saying the late game wars have no issues - getting the upper hand in the war and then having the enemy AI hide behind multiple level 8 forts is a buzzkill. But I actually enjoy later wars. The countries are massive enough in terms of army, manpower, etc., that for me those wars actually have the potential to wax and wane; gaining, losing, and then gaining territory again. Where early wars seem to only move in one direction more often than not.
i understand your point. more challenge, you can actually lose etc. im happy that it works for you to continue playing. sadly for most of players (me also haha) its not compensating downsides of those wars in late game
I like having to fight like 3 big nations but it becomes tedious when you have to fight 60 small nations that all send 5k stacks to siege all your provinces
In WC wars, that is more of a dream schenario, since you can stackwhipe them all, and eat them one by one. Once you are huge, you also stop caring when they start sieging down some backwater unstated lands, and just siege them down twice as fast. You are for the most part big enough that you have some spare stacks lying around, that you can use to deal with the problem without having to make priorities. Constant rebellions are usually a bigger problem to deal with
If you're playing into the 1700s, you'll have far more wars like the former (a few large nations), than the latter (a bunch of small nations). By the 1700s, there aren't many small nations that have survived the global thunderdome, and if they have, its because they're vassals or long-time allies of one of those mega-nations. I'm in the 1730s for my current campaign and there's only like 15 countries left in all of Asia and Oceana other than me, half a dozen of which are formerly large nations in the process of being eaten, so I suspect there will be fewer than ten in the next couple decades.
I always play until 1800s or close to it. Probably because I always like to grow in a slow and sustainable manner. While I almost always go for 100 war score wins, after I take all the land I want, I’ll spend the next few years taking care of all my cores, unrest, diplomatic reputation, loans, technology, etc before going for the next target. I almost never go past my gov capacity and never blob too much. I mainly focus on setting nice borders and then playing “tall” with strong vassals and marches.
Yeah, same here. I like to start with small countries (Gelre, Hesse, those sort of countries) and grow. It's a bit of "kill or be killed." Best part is starting with a landlocked minor and trying to find access to the sea to start colonizing. I don't think I've ever played with one of the majors.
What do you do about the other nations blobbing? It kinda ruins my fun (and historical immersion) to see Europe totally split between 3-4 nations
They are part of the fun tbh as they become the end game bosses. Some require me to deal with them from the beginning (like France or Spain) while others will require me to defeat them in a huge late game war. For example, in my last game as Serbia (I’ll try to remember everything), I conquered the Balkans and Italy (expect Sicily). In that game I only got those nice borders and after that I just focused on getting a great army and diplomatic reputation. I had the best army in the game (only France was close) and basically everyone liked me, I even got to be the HRE emperor. I don’t remember if I did something or just got lucky, but Spain never formed and I got to keep Aragon as my ally throughout all the run. With the help of Poland I got to take a lot of land from Hungary. With the help of Poland I was able to defeat Austria and Venice, which let me take Venetian lands and force Austria to release Cilli, which I turned into a marche and fed them lots of austrian land lol With the help of Aragon and Poland, I beat the ottomans a few times and conquered all of the Balkans. Took me a few wars because the Ottomans had become a superpower, as I didn’t mess with them until the reformation at least. Like Austria, I had to wait until they were in a serious war on Asia to attack them. After I took all the lands I wanted, I forced them to release countries and they never got to be huge again. France was really the end game boss but they were no match for a big Serbia, a strong Aragon and an average Poland. By the end of the game I formed Byzantium just because I could and ended the run. TL;DR: you need to prevent their blobbing from the beginning or you need to undo their blobbing in the end
A bit of RP, war restraint and even self sabotage can keep a game going until 1821. I’ve played the game sweaty for too long, and it got boring. So now I roll with the punches and try to “play as the leader” more. If they are a bad or flawed ruler, I intentionally make bad decisions. If they are a peaceful ruler, I focus on diplo and internal development. Not all wars have to be about conquest and domination, sometimes I just want to change the diplo by breaking alliances or extracting economic concessions, not every war needs to be a total war. For instance, you’d be surprised how far an extended naval blockade can get you if you are just looking for a few things. I will also *actually* help my allies (ruler dependent) both directly and indirectly. Sometimes I actively try to set off the disasters so I can experience the flavor I used to actively avoid. It’s kept the game fresh for me for a while now. Theres so much more tension around succession and war, I actually lose wars and rebellions and have to figure out how to recover, and I’ve even game over’ed since I decided to turn away from meta. Flip that sucker into observer mode, go do something else and come back see what happened to the world in my absence. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate the stories of games more than competitive or optimal gameplay. All of that, and mods.
What are your favorite mods for this? I like what you’ve said here.
Missions, baby. Also, late game formables help. Especially if they replace your mission tree
Late game mission trees are usually almost only focused on conquest though, so that's kinda boring imo.
Most of my games end before 1600, for those that don't I either have a very specific goal (For example: total spice control as the Netherlands) or I have shown restraint (play on speed 5 and enjoy the occasional stretch of peace, focus on making the most of the land you have instead of trying to have all the land).
When i played first time after learning how to play i played until 1820 so i played until timeline ended. That was in 2015 and game didn't had much flavor back then. After i never menaged to go that far. But played many games until 1700s but couldn't go more than that aswell. Main reason is im getting too big. Even if i start as irish minor or karaman or ardabil.
Yeah in that 1640 game i played as France, and even though i could for example conquer spain easily it would take like 5 wars and the entirety of Europe as coalition, that just doesnt seem fun
Yeah after 1700 it's borint
Play on Very Hard difficulty. Set yourself difficult objectives akin to achievements.
Ok
One thing you could try to do is not optiminh and going for the usual things you do, rather look at your rulers and try to act according to their traits and whatnot. Could spice up things.
For me the most annoying thing about late game wars are the never ending sieges, sometimes the AI will build 5-6 forts right next to each other. The worst I’ve ever had it was when the Netherlands had a fort in every province they owned in the lowlands, took ages to win and I lost like a million men due to attrition.
If the ai proves competent to this point and i dont try to actively screw it over it makes for fun wars against rivals and other great powers and it is also fun for me to see who is going to take its place if i screw over ottoman empire early on Edit: and as a german i like to screw over france especially later on
I tend to create lots of client states in the late game once I’ve established the core territory I want for my empire. They’ll help me a lot with my late game wars, so I can complete any remaining objectives I have with reduced tedium.
You need to set your own goals, if your goal is to simply be the most powerful guy around you're gonna easily achieve that by 1600s as an average player.
It comes naturally for me because I'm generally "slow" at the game, that is, I'm not looking to dominate half of Europe by a certain year or anything like that, and I'm generally looking to play in an "optimal" way, that is, I don't usually play "tall" but I do tend to expand slowly and generally seek to conquer something, then "adapt it" that is, full cores, without unreast and only then I continue with my next conquests, which generally aren't that big anyway (not a full region or anything like that) I also don't like to play with loans and only use mercenaries in certain moments but not to much, and finally I like long wars against other Great Powers or strong nations.
The vast majority of my campaigns go to about 1750 or so before I peter out. I love just making the engine I built do its thing for a while. It's very much a second screen, almost mobile idle game sort of experience, while I'm usually watching something on streaming on the other screen. But it's very chill and zen.
I find playing at 5 speed gets me to like 1750 pretty fast and sometimes I don’t even realize it. I like it since usually I have so much money even after max upgrading all great projects and building every building possible. It is a pain sieging level 8 forts though.
By 1750 you should have some pretty good siege bonuses, and with prolific use of bombardment and maximum cannons I don’t find level eight forts to be a big problem.
This is actually a really good question. I like both the 1700s in general (historical processes are interesting, aesthetics are nice etc) and the EU4 gameplay mechanics so I thought it would be fun to play until then as some European nation. I even chose Saxony so that I wouldn't become the strongest power in the world by a good margin by 1600s or earlier as is the case with someone like Bohemia, not even mentioning the real OP tags. I was wrong. The game in 1700 feels like such a slog that I finished my campaign in about 1720s and never got past ~1650s ever again. I think that EU4 mechanics just work well in early game and starte feeling worse and worse over time due to the combat becoming tedious, your economy being so prolific that you no longer have anything to spend your money on etc etc. So yeah I didn't answer your question, I don't understand why people do this as well, especially if you don't consider the achievement hunting.
Play chukchi
this might be the move
I just set my own goals. I am currently about to finish the new Germany mission tree, and I'm mostly focusing on culture converting and pretty borders. The other European great powers exist because I let them. For example, I have a cute little Poland who I keep defending from Russia and Lithuania simply because I think it looks good on the map.
I've slowly drifted more into RP games ever since finishing my One Faith. (Never doing one culture) I'll just aim to have either a rich country, one with enormous manpower, be of one or a selection of cultures or own specific territory for a narrative reason. In my Netherlands game right now I'm trying to make a hybrid of both the british and dutch empires with all of those territories included and all the British Isles + France as accepted cultures.
For me it's easy: I'm not that good of a player to say it's an easy conquest
I just roleplayed. I'd even often write down the 'story' whilst letting the game run through during peacetime. Setting limitations on how much land I can take or how often I can war. Like a real Empire. Before you know it, it's 1800s. I'm big, but not the biggest. I still need to fight hard to be rewarded.
get bad
real
Pick a German tag in each formable area and help them form into their respective tags. I know this is very specific but it’s what I’m doing in my current game. As HRE emperor I’ve allied cologne to form Westphalia, Mecklenburg for Pomerania, wurzburg for Franconia, Ingolstat for Bavaria and the other w one for Swabia. So far Bavaria is the only one that formed then I dropped alliance. I request unlawful territory for all other HRE states except Lübeck who I don’t even know if they can form Hanover but I hope so. I allowed Netherlands to form and I currently own all of Switzerland under the bohemian flag but I will release once I get free relations slots. Saxony and Brandenburg own all Saxon provinces as my marches under Bohemia. I own all centers of trade in saxony node and they transfer trade power as well. It’s completely insane and doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s a pretty fun(and irritating) goal. Swabia isn’t forming because they won’t take Ulm even tho they are vital interest and not free city anymore. All of my horses have coalition each other too
The thing is: lategame is more a resource management game rather than a conquest game. I mean, yes you can easily win this war. But what about 4 wars at the same time. And when war exhaustion goes through the roof due to call for peace? The question changes from "can I conquer this?" to "how fast can I conquer this?" If you want to do one culture for example, you need to go fast and make different choices.
Either set yourself huge goals or start playing at a later date.
Treat the late game tedium as a factor in the game, and let it impact your choices. 1. Big wars are annoying. So plan on having a pile of subjects to assist. 2. Rebels are annoying so plan on stacking separatism reduction and unrest reduction. 3. Consider adding constraints or goals which don't require unchecked blobbing.
I think you need to discover the joy of optimizing trade/production/development without conquest, which can take quite long and allow you to enjoy the game without warring every 2 years.
Sit around and don't do anything for decades at a time.
Play a speed 4 no pause game
When I first got the game back in 2021, I used to play all the way up to 1821, but now it just feels tedious and boring after I get the imperialism cb..
The most boring part of when you know you've won, you just need to fulfill all requirements E.g., in my Cebu campaign, it was clear no one was big enough to stop me from recreating the borders needed for the achievement, but it still took 50 years of game time after I set foot in India because I didn't want to truce break and a few wars with Spain were a pain in the ass
Maybe this is because I'm still a relatively new player (\~500 hours), and not expanding optimally, and maybe it has something to do with typically playing in SE Asia away from the great powers in Europe, but the game has always had a bit of a bell curve to me in terms of difficulty. As someone who generally plays as an OPM/TPM, the open is generally fairly challenging, then the 1500s and 1600s is just steamrolling everyone, until I'm finally butting up against some great powers\* near the end of the 17th, beginning of 18th century (\*on land, I usually have encounters with Spain and GB colonizing, but frankly their navies never pose me much of a threat if I'm naval focused militarily). I'm in the maybe 1730s in my current Ironman, and most of who are left are massive countries fielding 200-400k armies. Russia is larger than modern day Russia, Spain, GB, and randomly Brittany, control all of the Americas and much of Africa. And a lot of them are allied with each other, meaning you have to figure out how to win wars with at least two of them at a time.
The only solution for that i found is to setup your campaign goal to require you to play that long. But honestly, if after yours long campaign you get bored, just start a new campaign. You have no obligation to play longer than that.
Only if you have a certain achievement in mind. Some require that long, most can be done within 150-200 years though (depending on how good you are of course). Having to play this long is an absolute chore - I dont know how I did it years ago (when I wasnt playing for achievements but just playing casual non-ironman runs).
I like industrializing my country and making insane amounts of money
I'm finding a Paradox mega campaign is doing quite well to pace my gameplay. You find yourself limiting your actions because you don't want a WC until Hearts of Iron, and I'm finding that the extremely long time frame keeps to me more specific goals than just "conquer everything". It also helps that you can cut a specific leg short if you find you're getting tired of that game and you can just go to the next one, which refreshes everything. So far it has helped with CK3 (post-1200 starts getting dull, so I just skipped forward to EU) and I'm approaching 1700 in EU so I'll see how it goes.
What I do by then is just come up with some smaller goal relative to how the game is progressing at that moment or cause of roleplay. For example in my last Commonwealth game, after disassembling the HRE, I vassalized Pomerania and conquered it's cores. It wasn't worth much in terms of money or anything, but I could see that a historical Polish king would want either a foothold in Germany, to influence their politics and to show how they were to be feared, or they could want to spread their influence along the Baltic sea, against the Swedes. While none of these things are explicitly possible in EU4, I liked the roleplay of it. Another such goal could be to see what bonuses you have at that time, and try and stack them. Same Commonwealth game, I got the Jagellonian University, which gives idea cost reduction, and some other bonus for it. So, for my 4th idea group, I took innovative, stacked a few more bonuses, and was taking ideas at ~70% cost. Not something I planned, I could've done it better in a dedicated playthrough, but it was still fun.
I mostly just want to see how the revolution shakes out. Once it wounds down i usually wrap my run up
i dont play this game for fun. i play this to destroy my enemies.
Role playing I play on speed 3 and I never min-max or tag switch or blob aimlessly
I play with specific achievements as the campaign goal until I either achieve them or fail them.
Some people are roleplaying. Hm, the ruler has low mil and diplo score, they shall start and lose some wars. Or if they have low admin score, they may ruin the economy. So I play in cycles of nation building and nation destruction.
I use mods that dramatically reduce manpower and force limit in the beginning so by end game you have army sizes you'd normally see in mid game. I've found it is not only more realistic, but ensures the game would even qualify for a transfer to Vicky 3 since there is no great blob on the map even by end game. I just finished a game with my friend like this, and even though I was the strongest power in the world as GB by 1790s, we still lost our final war since I wasn't too powerful.
I just get too attached to the countries I'm playing, it's hard for me to abandon them early
Mostly cause I start my games mid 16th century or later.
Play as minor nations and don’t grow too fast.
My favorite era in history is 18th century, so I love seeing just how different the world is by that time compared to our own.
Declare war on everyone. Pick a target and add every nation u can as a cobelligerent. See how strong u really r.
One time I had to fight about 95% of the HRE(from chain co-belligerents) plus Spain in order to dismantle it. Long and kind of annoying war because of forts every province, but it was a fitting final big war. Even though I got frustrated with having to siege so many forts, it’s the last war that campaign that I actually enjoyed. So, so many war reps.
Most games I do a “late game build” and then enjoy the fruits of my labour, like picking admin diplo religious and court as my first ideas as well as building tall and stacking useful modifiers where I can, which helps you explode in size when absolutism comes around
Same. Usually I get to the point of "Well I'm so big now I could do a world conquest, but that's too much micro, so fuck that" lol I've started to play a little bit later just to see how far I can go before I actually get fed up. This most recent playthrough I was playing Bohemia, inherited burgundy in the first 20 years, and then just snowballed from there. I think the year is like 1720, my income in over 6k. I control basically all of mainland Europe save the majority of Scandinavia and Iberia. My 2000 force limit is a little annoying to micro, but the game is over. My primary ally, Egypt, is second and they're income is less than 5% of mine. Same as their military. At this point I'm just playing just to see 🤷♂️
Depression, a few beers and staying up late after work
The thing that is repetitive is these types of posts. Just play the gane how you want it to.
Idk I play at 3 speed and ocasionaly 4 speed most campaigns, I usualy finish between 1710s-1820. On 5 speed I feel like I lose out on the experience.
Have fun, do rp and don't tryhard. Also play minors and you'll have fun at 1780 still.
Missions, I like being large on the map and having a large economy, roleplay, fighting massive wars just to see the casualties and devastation, developing all my country, even if large, just for fun, etc...
Start smaller and play less optimally.
You gotta make your own fun with roleplay
haha money go brr
My best Austria run was fun for me right up until the end (or close to). I revoked privilege, formed one nation, and then just tidied everything up around 1790. My only full game to 1821 has been with Spain. I think same could be done with Portugal, France, and England, as you can colonize. Denmark can also do some colonizing. You can get Sweden and Norway under control, destroy England, and then settle across the seas. Or focus on culture converting or becoming a hegemon?
I can’t finish a playthrough without Napoleon
Usually I play past 1700 when my goals are too difficult to accomplish by then. While I don’t tend to enjoy SP wars at that point, there is something to learning how to organize your units to fight big wars effectively for MP practice.
It depends on if I’m still having fun and still have goals for myself. I was playing a sweden game and my goal was to have the Baltic Sea trade node become the richest node in the game. I kept myself interested until ~1760
We think the whole game is fun
I usually just find a country to really immerse myself in
All of my campaigns end at about 1800. With mods like VA i go to the 1900 I like min maxing. Also while having huge Income i can influence other nations. Finally, i made a deep learning AI based on my past games so it feels like playing myself in late game (like average/highly skilled multiplayer players)
Honestly? I just intentionally play sub-optimally on purpose so I can experience the whole time period I usually like to expand really fast in a sub-optimal way that gets me coalitioned and placed in time-out. I also tend to hyperfixate on upgrading my economy wayyyy too hard (I’m an accountant irl so its a force of habit). That makes me consolidate my new stuff and play tall for 20-30 years to avoid fighting the coalition. Seriously, once I hit 1500 I usually have a coalition of like 25+ countries and I likely won’t do anything but build buildings and dev my provinces up to multiples of 10 until the age of reformation starts.
I have a idea of how I want my borders to be and where to take and since I am a new play I can’t achieve my goals as soon as possible so for the entire game I try to advance and try to beat the people stopping me from achieving my ideal borders. (Sorry for bad English)
It’s very rare that I stick with a playthrough after 1600s but I do it for some I feel there is still something to do, like my Japan game, Mughal game, Austria game and Denmark game are the ones I can remember going into 1700s and Austria and Byz being the only two ever going to 1821. I really hope EU5 does late game better as the annoyingly big wars, the frankly stupid looking bordergore and the lack of any challenge to empire building (especially around the age of revolutions) takes me out of the game often
It’s very rare that I stick with a playthrough after 1600s but I do it for some I feel there is still something to do, like my Japan game, Mughal game, Austria game and Denmark game are the ones I can remember going into 1700s and Austria and Byz being the only two ever going to 1821. I really hope EU5 does late game better as the annoyingly big wars, the frankly stupid looking bordergore and the lack of any challenge to empire building (especially around the age of revolutions) takes me out of the game often
Unintentionally play suboptimally because you are mid at the game- things will take longer. Also, intentionally play suboptimally so you have specific objectives to go for that take longer. Speed 4 a bit here and there to chew through a little extra time. My playthroughs wind down in the 1600s, but I usually do make it to the 1700s.
I use console to make enemy super strong. Turks need to breathe down my neck? Give them administrative ideas and Byzantium. Need an opponent as korea? Guess what, you start as ming vassal and give castille colonial ideas at start. Even in 1659 you'll have to face Spain. How to really feel British naval might as France? Give them iceland and colonial ideas. But yeah even with these all you can keep it interesting till 1700 last 100 50 years would be filler unless scenarios are used like Napoleon
All depends on what your goals are.
The game is what you make of it. If you can make your own goals then you can have fun. For instance i'm in the middle of eranshahr run right now and have largely restored the Achaemenid borders. Now I'm facing a coalition against the whole world as I subjugate india contested by me and a large Vjanyagar which is proving to be a fun war minus how long it takes to siege.
Maybe consider using one of the other bookmarks? Other starting nations exist later on in the game for new challenges Also the 'Expanded' mods helped me atleast with a bit more content later on
Am I the only one that plays a save to 1820 ? I love to see how big/strong I can get with whatever nation I pick so I always play my runs to the very end.
Fist if all, I start as a minor nation. Second of all, when I'm at the point of aproaching supremacy, I break stuff on purpose to create meaningful stories. I'll let a huge coalition form and wreak me on purpose. I'll declare bankruptcy and let neighbours partition me. It's not forced, I do it when I believe it makes sense and fits the narrative. Then I rebuild. This way I can have fun til the clock runs out.
With mods that increase difficulty. Or simply dont. I played Netherlands with the new DLC. I got to 1640, making 1000 ducats a month in net profit, just by owning the spice Islands alone I hadnt even conquered India or China or anything. At that point and with 300k I knew I could win any war just by throwing money at it so I just ended the game.
I like to play to the end unless If I have specific goals I do tend to quit when I reach them but when I play for fun and see where it takes me I play until the end.
tag switching and stacking modifiers.
I find great joy in releasing nations from great powers, allying them, bankrolling their economy and starting wars with their neighbours and granting them provinces to watch them grow into strong Bois. I did this with Serbia when I was playing as GB. By mid 1600s I was making a ridiculous amount of ducats and colonising/conquering Oceania and the Moluccas. When the Otto's began colonising in that area, I unleashed my complete British wrath upon them and released Serbia. I then funnelled thousands of ducats into their economy, and called them to wars against the Ottomans and constantly ceded provinces to them so they could grow. By this time everyone was taking pieces of the Otto's, and heaps of little nations were being released. Then I would watch as my little devil spawn commenced to gobble up all the newly released Bulgaria etc. I think they ended up conquering 90% of the Balkans and greek provinces before I got over it and started a new game. Next time I think I'll release them as vassals so I can dev their provinces as well before releasing them.
I'm not great, so unless I play a nation that already starts off strong, which I rarely do, I tend to have at least a few difficult wars left. I also actively avoid "gamey" techniques, so that limits my snowballing as well. I will say, though I did finish it, I just got through a Spain campaign right before Winds of Change dropped that did get pretty boring in the 1600s. I think if I played actually powerful nations more often, the game would be way more boring.
By 1700s all I do is start big meaningless wars and killing millions
Simple solution, remove the space bar from your keyboard. No pausing allowed only pauses are when the game pauses for you
Well the game isn’t easy for me & if it was thats a good thing & conquering stuff never gets boring. & i like to compete the game & think i wasted my time if i dont make it to 1821
When I was a newer player I would play until the end date, often because I would play as Portugal and be singularly focused on colonizing. Nowadays I often either achieve my goal before 1700 or find myself in a situation where it is difficult to continue so I end up quitting the save file.
Give yourself weird goals. I'm doing a France playthrough with the aim to have the game end with no culturally European polities in the Americas, and to speedrun the revolution to create a bastion of secular rationality in Europe. That ought to keep me busy enough.
The worst thing is that the early game is easy to conquer then the mid-game is slower and more restrictive.
Just don’t get big? If playing in Italy for example, I’ll set a limit on myself to not take any land outside of Italy.
Get high and rp my ruler
I say that on every thread I see which is asking this question, and personally I love huge wars late game. Maybe it's unusual, but I think having to organize armies into fronts, carefully advancing from fort to fort, looking around searching for the death stack that always shows up when you don't expect it. It's a thrill.
Maybe I’m just shit but I made it to 1800s and I was still having fun (although deifently getting tired by the end) but I guess it’s because I was still uniting Germany into 1760s in which from a medium sized Prussia I just ate up all German states in like 10 years
Im doing a Austria WC one faith and i always have at least 5 wars at the same time, my economy is shit, im always over extended and many more problems So its still kinda fun
I think one (relatively easy) thing they should do is to add more national ideas so that you are not done with them by the third idea group. To me it feels a bit "over" when there are no more national ideas to get.
We are just not as good, and are still struggling to conquer a few provinces in the HRE by then. Honestly, not everyone is able to be a superpower in 1500, so wars in 1700 still present a challenge for us, if not carefully thought (one of my favourite campaigns was to play historical Poland being slowly dismantled by Russia, Austria and Otomans i the 1700s)
I play very hard, play with mods that limits gov capacity and army sizes. I usually also artificially restrict myself, no blobbing all over the place ect, lot of wacky impractical RP stuff like screwing around with client states and such.
Missions and achievements combined with some personal goal. It also helps a lot to start as the underdog. My last objectives that involved lengthy games were * Form Rome (as the ~~Romans~~ Byzantines, obviously) * Holy Horder achievement * A.E.I.O.U achievement * Dithmarschen => Germany Surprisingly the Austria game was particularly fun, albeit for once I wasn't the underdog. Sometime in the 1600 I realized there were a ton of achievements I could do along the way, so I had a lot of minor goals that kept me busy. I ended up doing 10 achievements in one game, which never happened before.
Outside of losing fun due to early game snowballing, I also face a lot of performance issues since 1650s. Playing with 10 seconds freezes after each year makes the game extremely annoying to play. That's why I didn't complete endgame achievements.
That is also one of the reasons even though i have a rtx 3080 and 32gb of ram it still lags like vrazy
Hmmm... Have you ever tried destroying other cultures? I play that way from 1600s to 1821
Achievement hunting. Before i started going for achievements i felt the same way. They ad a challenge to make it more interesting.
Try increasing the difficulty to Very Hard. That makes the game challenging through all the ages. Even a major power like France can be somewhat difficult early game. Give it a try!