I would argue that AoW4 being a fun 4X game helps a lot, the toy box portion in this case is simply a nice flavor aspect. Stellaris tried and failed to do the 4X part, because while the explore part is fun, the expand (dealing with potentially dozens of newly conquered planets and a slow expulsion/genocide system is boring) and exploit (with the pop AI being absolutely retarded) part are tedious and the exterminate part is the only way for the player to improve the game performance, not really part of the fun, but something the player MUST do to enjoy his game. You can't have massive space battles across multiple fronts without the game slowing to a crawl.
This is something I heard a lot but something I never personally experienced for a very stupid reason.
I stopped enjoying the exploration parts of Stellaris around 2019. Way too many anomalies that didn't really matter (and way too many that were nods to Star Trek, which I hate), but the system itself was borked because of how it worked in conjunction with the land-grab aspect of the game. I prefer to play tall in my 4Xs; the game would double-dip punish me, even after archeology was added to try to improve mid-game exploration. So I would just set the game to one speed and windowed and then tab in and out for the first century or so of playing while I did something else. Eventually once you understand the meta and builds of Stellaris long enough and set the right popups to pause the game, you can do this without any repercussions in the midgame too. By the time I realized that was why I never understood or experienced the complaints about game speed, I realized Stellaris was the first Paradox game to lose me. Even HoI4, which is particularly amenable to this sort of tab in, tab out playstyle thanks to national focuses and frontlines, still could hold my interest better.
So turns out that national socialism with a hint of free trade is the optimal strat for prosperity. Duely noted, thanks Paradox.
I couldn't figure out colonisation, it said I had no ports within range of the colonisable territory west of Sokotra even though I had 2 level 5 ports in Morocco.
Where is good land to prioritise colonising? I know of the rubber RGO southwest of Sokotra, but as mentioned I couldnt get colonising to work even as I was a secondary power, and none of the war justifications I could get on Sokotra involved taking their land.
So turns out that national socialism with a hint of free trade is the optimal strat for prosperity. Duely noted, thanks Paradox.
I couldn't figure out colonisation, it said I had no ports within range of the colonisable territory west of Sokotra even though I had 2 level 5 ports in Morocco.
Where is good land to prioritise colonising? I know of the rubber RGO southwest of Sokotra, but as mentioned I couldnt get colonising to work even as I was a secondary power, and none of the war justifications I could get on Sokotra involved taking their land.
Colonization is situational. Want rubber? Sure, it'll be useful when you get the techs that create the goods that require factories for it, but is it optimal now? Are there settler colonies you would prefer to go after instead? Who are you playing as? Do they have events that lets them fight with Britain over some of theirs? What is the status of Indonesia or the Middle East? etc.
So turns out that national socialism with a hint of free trade is the optimal strat for prosperity. Duely noted, thanks Paradox.
I couldn't figure out colonisation, it said I had no ports within range of the colonisable territory west of Sokotra even though I had 2 level 5 ports in Morocco.
Where is good land to prioritise colonising? I know of the rubber RGO southwest of Sokotra, but as mentioned I couldnt get colonising to work even as I was a secondary power, and none of the war justifications I could get on Sokotra involved taking their land.
Balance-wise, the game is still stuck in rebalance hell. Every time they fix a broken mechanic, they also break a completely different one in the same update.
Yeah, anytime I think about going back, I just check the latest update posts. Apparently by 1600 everyone can hire millions of mercs.
Not to mention the need for each update to fix/rework Christianity in Europa Universalis. The game is blatantly unfinished but I suppose it is a small mercy that these updates are free instead of pay walled behind DLC.
Yeah, anytime I think about going back, I just check the latest update posts. Apparently by 1600 everyone can hire millions of mercs.
Not to mention the need for each update to fix/rework Christianity in Europa Universalis. The game is blatantly unfinished but I suppose it is a small mercy that these updates are free instead of pay walled behind DLC.
A rare circumstance where leddit tism' is actually useful.
Yeah I'll give EUV another year at this point. They recently just added Imperial Circles in 1.3, which is something you'd think that comes with the base game. (It's a good addition though, gives HRE a bit more regional character from what little I seen of it.)
Apparently the cause is that the AI hoards money instead of investing it and that there was no actual limit on the number of mercenaries a given country could employ, provided they had the gold.
Thing is, this was an issue in EU IV as well albeit even dumber. At least EU IV had the smarts to limit mercenary count to being based on manpower (which still employed too many especially in later patches when getting gold became much easier). They fixed it in later patches by simply having a limited number of mercenary companies per region and also had their own manpower pool to limit their spam.
What really gets me though is that Johann pushed a patch that recreated a problem he had already solved. Why he didn't simply add the same concept to EU V is beyond me.
What really gets me though is that Johann pushed a patch that recreated a problem he had already solved. Why he didn't simply add the same concept to EU V is beyond me.
EU IV Merc Companies are cool but they killed the possibility of hiring just a few mercs to boost your regular army which was a common thing in the game (and which I particularly liked). plus with the Army Professionalism system it made it really counterproductive to keep hiring merc companies once you got past 1550 or so as you would lose your professonalism really fast which kinda kills the rhythm since IRL they were using merc companies way into the 1780s.
If I had to speculate I would say they wanted to bring back late game mercs and that merc/regulars interaction and fucked up.
They kind of tried to balance the merc spam from beta but it's still a big issue. Though in my recent playthrough in HRE I'm sitting on so much money mid game, I just wait for enemies to hire mercs and bribe them. I win wars without single of my pops dying.
EU5 is deeply flawed and balance swings so much. But I do enjoy it a lot. I tried playing EU4 and it doesn't do it for me anymore. I have no problems with going back to CK2 or CK3 and having blast. But EU5 ruined EU4 for me.
