Is EU4 with all DLC the most complex grand strategy game ever made by a AAA studio?
I'm not talking about best, just most complicated. Like, the most simultaneous microeconomic "games" going on at once in order to fully play the game. I'm assuming i'm wrong here.
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Most systems are fairly simple, about the economy : trade is a puzzle game (control the nodes and the flow of trade), devving for institutions, build the buildings when it's profitable etc. The real emergent gameplay comes from diplomacy and war
>The real emergent gameplay comes from diplomacy and war
>
>>>
It always comes down to
>get powerful allies
>curry favors
>after two wars you have won the game
Surely is more complicated when playing in hard starts but diplomacy is not really that engaging.
>real emergent gameplay comes from diplomacy and war
>if (enemy has weak allies) { attack }
>if (enemy has strong allies) {
>find weakest ally
>attack weakest ally
>now you are at war with enemy without the strong allies }
>editor note: "attack" means make a blob of soldiers and right click at the enemy forts and watch some percentages go
I dislike it, especially since they added development. The idea that the privinces are never going to change organically unless i click the three buttons is boring and unimmersive
there are mods for you
there are random events that offer to raise dev in provinces, but you won't be making multiple constantinoples like that, far too slow.
I remember people making this argument back around the time right before Imperator came out. EUIV was so bloated with shit tacked on without direction that it turned into complexity for complexity's sake to the point where some people stopped considering Liquoria II as the most complex of the PDS games out at the time. I wouldn't say it's the most complex of all time simply because I haven't played too many GSG's outside of the Paradox ones and Total War (which most people count as a GSG these days), but it's definitely the most complex Paradox game to the point where a lot of people who used to be big fans of it no longer touch it because it became such a chore to play.
>a lot of people who used to be big fans of it no longer touch it because it became such a chore to play.
I felt that
I wouldn't say so. The systems don't interact as much as you would think. A change in one aspect of your nation won't cause a cascading effect. Completely ignoring something like trade or estates will weaken you but you can still play the game as normal. EU4 is about optimizing a 1000 variables but they all feed into the same end value of how big and strong your country is.
shallow pool, so much bloat
eu4 is just one big boardgame. modifier central.
>Is EU4 with all DLC the most complex grand strategy game ever made by a AAA studio?
its not even the most complex grand strategy game made by paradox
That title would have to go to Snoozetoria 2
hundreds of systems duct taped together, but none of them are much more complex than "press the button to spend the resource to make the number go up".
no, no paradox game qualifies as "the most complex grand strategy game". at this point the average paradox fan is literally a child.
if the average paradox fan is a child then the average dark souls fan is an unborn baby fetus
not far from the truth
A post a stupid as this just prove his point.
I would never acknowledge I play eu4 even if I'm in the middle of a pdx con
Wouldn't be able to live with that shame
>In the middle of pdx con
Its easily the best of the current games. Hoi4 has been shit for the past few years, vic3 has always been shit, stellaris is vic 3 but space, and imperator is dead
i'm not saying "lol pdx games are for babies lmao" as some kind of joke, i'm saying that seriously, paradox's biggest demographic is 12-18 year old boys. also what the frick does dark souls have to do with anything other than your own weird inferiority complex?
hearts of iron 3 filtered me, EU4 did not.
Hearts of Iron 4 isn't that much different from 3, except all the information is presented properly.
its less complex but honestly more fun.
Complexity means many different systems interacting with eachother. EU4 has many different systems in near complete isolation. That's why it's hot garbage, while Vicky2 with less systems but which are way more interconnected is a gem.
wide as an ocean deep as a puddle, endgame in chess with pawns only is 100x more complex than anything eu4 has to offer
The only fundamental change since it's first launch is estates. Everything else is just a control for a base modifier.
EU IV is a bloated boardgame. No, it's not conplex; no, it's not a great game; no, it's not difficult.
It's just an infinite money-maker for PDX because Paradrones will keep buying the DLC no matter what.
The burghers are gentle, paternal angels who will take good care of you. You can never take too many loans. The interest is virtually 0. Worst case scenario is that a kindly banker will occasionally visit, ask if you're okay, and tell you that you don't have to pay them back until you're ready. Someday, when you've reformed the Roman Empire and slaughtered a million infidels, you'll delivdr great speech about how you've "unified" the world and opened the Silk Road
When thinking of who to thank, you'll look out into the crowd and see the burghers smiling. You'll remember that they were there with you from the beginning, helping you get on your feet, making you the dictator you were meant to be. And you'll give them a knowing nod and smile. But you still won't pay them back.
This perfectly sums it up. The biggest issue with EU4, easily.
Best feeling is when you've outgrown the previous loans, then take one regular loan to pay back the burgher loans, then take 5 new ones, and pay back the bank loan.
Pretty accurate given how almost every European state and ruler was perpetually in debt until about the 18th to 19th century. Edward III of England defaulting on his loans tanked the economy of some Italian city-states in the 14th century because of how much he had borrowed. A large part of King Charles tensions with parliament came from the fact that he was constantly in debt and had to ask parliament for permission to lend him money which they often refused to do for various reasons
>parliament
Nobility loans should come alongside some kind of democratization. The whole reason that absolutist rulers started making parliamentary bodies is that they had to in order to get loans from their burghers/nobility.
I agree. It would also make it far more satisfying from the 1600s onward to centralize the state and erode the powers of the old nobility, giving you access to more powerful mechanics and a better economy in the late game. Could also tie into the revolution mechanic better instead of having them spring up from nothing. Remember when we thought they were going to add the Ottoman decadence mechanic to every massive empire?
It'd also just be nice for your nobility to actually have power. Right now its nice to have the nobility at +60 loyalty so they give more buffs, but you don't need it. Its so ridiculous. You can have them at 30% loyalty (read another way, 70% of your nobility could hate you) and there's no downside. The nobility should be needed to raise taxes, armies, and take loans. For example, if you're France and you piss off the duke of Aquitaine, you should get reduced (or maybe no) taxes/armies from his lands. And also, the nobility estate should require, you know, LANDED NOBLES. Absorbing vassals should not be an option in the diplo screen. To swallow a vassal, you should need to have a claim to their throne or outright fight the vassal. Brittany was subjugated to France for centuries, but it wasn't absorbed until the King of France was also the Duke of Brittany. I dunno, I could keep going on but I'm preaching to the choir. There's so many good ideas in EU4 that just go nowhere, its so frustrating
I kinda hate that in the current patch the ai can get super lucky and just steamroll. Makes playing minor nations a lot more annoying. Austria having Hungary, bohemia, Pomerania, and burgundy in 30 years is just annoying to deal with. Is it doable? Yes. Is it fun? No. France does it the most from what ive seen.
I haven't played for about 2 years so I don't know what has been added since then, but I would not call it that complex.
I have only played Vic2 a very tiny bit but that games definitely seems to have more complex mechanics. I would also argue that even Imperator Rome is slightly more complex than EU4.
Had a lot of fun with EU4 but I did burn out after playing like 1800 hours. I also feel like the game had too many expansions and you just get too many modifiers now so every country spirals into being OP really easily.
I wish the financial system was fleshed out more, colonies should be extremely expensive and risky but also pay off more than they do in the game. In real life spain and portugal got their colony monies from italian banks, it would be cool to play the game as an italian banker israelite and control europe through their finances. Right now all of money in the game comes and goes through a black hole that is your own nobility and thats fricking lame. I should be able to bring empires to their knees with issued debt and get filthy rich in the process. Trade is also shallow and gay. Instead of trade flowing unidirectionally you should be able to pull trade from all nodes you can reach based on your trade power. Being unable to pull trade from europe to china is gay
Most "grand" strategy games made by paradox and other devs are essentially sandbox roleplaying games. There are very few actual grand strategy games in existence for a variety of reasons. Something like pic related with an officer mode would fulfill a niche that would make money and remind people who enjoy strategy games what a strategy game requires.
Sure but is managed by boomers and it's turn based
>Something like pic related
>le toy soldiers on a grid moving in turns
holy boomer autism moment
try the meiou and taxes mod for EU4, that one is actually complex and makes eu4 look like a shitty board game
does the new version actually make eu4 fun? I played some older version and it didnt really feel like that much changed from the base game.
meiou 3.0 is the best way to experience EU4 at this point
Can I finally play it in speed 3?
>playing above speed 1
i could never... anyway they moved all the lag to the yearly tick now so the game will freeze for about a minute at which point you can tab out to select your comfy music of choice
this, I've played about 4 hours vanilla, 50 hours other mods and the rest of my 1.5k hours are in meiou, once I've tried that I couldn't go back to vanilla where you use ruler points to dev up provinces for institutions. Who came up with shit like that?
When you need to watch 10 videos 40 min each to learn how to play it... Well that pretty much makes it one of the most complicated
Meiou is unnecessarily complex, vanilla eu4 is just bloated.
>paradox
>AAA studio
AAAA studio*
EU4 and HOI4 is the magnum opus of Paradox. Everything after is shit.
lol, bloated sandbox dog shit with hundreds of arbitrary modifiers used to simulate more complex mechanics that never existed is what they are, turned into monstrosities to test stuff for their eventual sequels.
What are the best idea groups to stack ethnic cleansing modifiers? Forgot the in game name
That speaks poorly about paradox
HoI4 is just a dumbed down version of Hoi3 with eye candy, gamey mechanics however being probably one of the most moddable PDX titles ever
I've made my peace with the mana system but the advisor system must be one of the most moronic concepts I've ever seen. Why do I have to pay up to hundreds of ducats to hire and fire random people before people realise what my king yelling "get me a diplo rep guy!" means?
Advisors are largely still a holdover from eu3 and it's one thing they've never directly revisited.
I interpret it as being able to attract a cadre of skilled people to your court depending on how much you spend as opposed to just one guy but that's mostly just me larping to make a half-baked mechanic more interesting
Mana is supposed to be an abstraction for how your country's development is going. Advisors leverage ducats into mana.
>Why do I have to pay up to hundreds of ducats to hire and fire random people before people realise what my king yelling "get me a diplo rep guy!" means?
If you can't work out what is going on in world when you do this then you are probably autistic.
MoO3 exists
Does CreamAPI still work to unlock DLCs? I wanna buy the game legit after all these years but there's no way I'm giving paraisraelites even a cent for their bloatslop.
yes, never tried it in multiplayer though it should work
With Meiou and Taxes yes
If M&T were released as a game of its own, everyone would make fun of the horrific UI
after the MagnaMundi and EastvsWest disasters paradox will never trust a modding team to have a go at a game, so that's probably the best they can do with eu4.
The UI couldn't get any better than that on EU4, in fact what they did is already a miracle.
No, it's nowhere near actual complexity. I'd go as far as arguing that EU2 was more complex.
Play any fricking given management game and you will understand how incredibly shallow PDX "grand strategies" are, particularly in their post-public traded status.
>Play any fricking given management game
give a good example
Nta, but if we are talking complexity, then fricking Football Manager series has more stuff going than any given PDX game ever did.
And I'm 100% serious here.
You can figure out modern PDX game just by clicking buttons - no pun or joke on DLCs intended - and get the hang of the basics all by yourself within single sitting. In fact, the only exception of this rule was original Victoria, which was incredibly obtuse. But all in all, pretty straightforward and simple games without any actual complexity to them - just a whole lot of information to take straight off the bat.
Sit to a Football Manager with a handful of beginner guides and you will still be struggling to figure out actual connections between mechanics and amount of moving parts - and not because of UI, but because there is simply a frickload of variables going that a 30 pages guide will be barely glancing at.
Why aren't we making football manager threads on /vst/
Genuine question
A few years back (/vst/ is gettin' old vros) I remember us having a lot of general manager type games threads, WMMA, FM, OOTP etc
No, that would be Pride of Nations
unironical soul.