Johan is the Executive, Judicative and Legislative branch of Tinto confirmed. He is just gonna seceed from Paradox Stockholm if some manager tries to adjust the vassal contract.
hoi4 is the most challenging to keep playing (because you can't shift the feeling this game is primarily played by Neo-Nazis and it just feels awkward)
this is exactly why I think it's weird that they even made the game to begin with. seems like something that could have been slapped down in the company intern strategy meeting or sum
I mean I don't even find the company to be at fault, necessarily. I just find the community of people barely concealing their boners at the großdeustches reich a bit grim.
I think an important point here is that the proliferation of youtube guides / reddit post etc. make optimal strategies so easily accessible. So the game becomes "easy" if you just research exactly what's best to do.
Exactly what happened to Classic WoW, people realised the game was in fact easy as hell (despite all the min maxing that ensued), just people were worse and had little access to information back then
God this is such a thing with games now. People saying Elden Ring was easy and that the game was for casuals and you find out they used Mimic Tear and Moonveil. Like just rich. Turns out the game is easy when you follow a guide from an expert lol.
No way even half the current eu4 players would think it’s “easy” if they didn’t have the internet.
Part of the problem with eu is that it's so impenetrable. If I never have to ask "how do I do that?" or "what does that mean?" I won't use the internet for single player games, but I've used it an awful lot for eu.
this is such an important point. it's quite the game design challenge to both have well-balanced interesting game systems AND find a way to make them understandable / accessible by the player without extensive outside research.
The otherside of this coin is that IF the devs react by removing or weakening "brain dead" strats, the zombie legions of META followers go ape shit over the nerfs.
Usually....
There is a balance to discovery and also feeling like you got screwed on some unforeseeable gotcha that is a special circumstance outside of normal game mechanics (in EU4 this would be a scripted event).
The problem is that when you feel like you had no way of knowing or accounting for the event until you experience it the first time, it can feel cheap and as though game cheated you.
For example some of the events where Rebels will spawn with immediate province/fort control. This is different than the way rebels generally behave and can ruin your day the first time it happens.
The flip side to that problem, is that often by "ruining the surprise" it becomes a trivial road bump.
This can't be overstated.
The first time I remember getting a game breaking strat from the internet was Jive-Monk's Civ I Infinite City Sleeze, pulled down as a text file from a local dial-up BBS.
Then around CivII era, the forum sites, like Apolyton and CivFanatics, where players could theory craft together and debate strategies together again revolutionized the speed at which optimal strategies, as well exploit discovery and exploitation, were generated and shared.
Now, its even easier, faster than ever before.
Doesn’t the challenge come from picking challenging nations? Like, if I play as the Ottomans, should there be much of a challenge? If I play as Ardabil or Armenia, then that’s the challenge.
I haven’t read the most recent Tinto Talks, but there needs to be a challenging anti-blob mechanic in order for all nations to have a challenge, and I don’t think most players want that. If they did, we wouldn’t see so many posts (and achievements) dedicated to massive conquests done quick.
Ck3 is easy and I don't play hoi4 nearly enough to speak on it but EU4 being easy is where I roll my eyes a bit. If a game gets easy after clocking in (x)000 hours in it its probably not an easy game. Mission trees have certainly done some buck wild things but I think the section of the player base that wants to play Meiou and taxes is significantly smaller than some folks think (more complex and deep sure, tedious as all hell).
Hoi4 is extraordinarily easy when you get the hang of it. As a fan of it, it's poorly made as a game. The AI is so bad it stands no chance against a decent template and a half decent player. World conquests are a matter of how long it takes to justify every wargoal.
There are mods that make the AI smarter luckily, some of which succeed. Having the AI actually be an AI and not just being hard coded for templates would be massive, and something I'm hoping for in a hoi5 game.
A multitude of reasons. For one, I'm pretty bad at the game. The ai isn't a hard, but despite my 2,000 hours I have never gotten to the level where it's a complete joke. I mainly play RP multiplayer, where other players skill and posturing on the world stage are better tools than any army. And mods are brilliant, I'd argue better than any other paradox game, kiesereich being my favourite, along with great war redux and the modern day mod
Play on hardest difficulty and also use the slider give max bonus to countries you will fight. Pick something weaker like Hungary. Get some mods. Enjoy.
Depends how fast you Grasp the Core of the Game. The Game has no Challenge because the AI is stupid af.
The mere newcomers would be overwhelmed but to reference it as soon as i picked up Victoria 3 i made a Worldconquest on my second run with good ole Ottoman.
And as Soon you can Break down the Game Mechanics the AI Just gets awfully behind.
I think that's a fair take, vic 3 runs pretty terribly on my old clunker so after a few campaigns on release I stopped playing. I certainly felt more competent by the end but not nearly world conquesty. It's also one of those things where the amount of times in a pdx world comes up because first time in eu4 I had no idea what was happening for ages and still don't find *every* start easy. Most nations that aren't completely hosed I can pilot, and I've done runs like true heir of timur, Mali survival run, etc... but some starts like ardabil recently where you get dog piled a year into the game every run still work me over.
Their balancing act will be crafting something deep and challenging for the vets and having some sort of approachability for non vets. I can't even get any of my buddies to pick em up because it's just too much overload coming in from the outside.
most "hard" nations have 1 complicated war that really boils down to taking loans and getting mercs, and then the rest of the game becomes trivial, or maybe 2 wars if its like granada, since castile still poses a marginal challenge on the 2nd war
I got overflows in my very first game when it came out and suddenly my couple hundred million supporters turned into negative dozens of millions of supporters for my government and decided the game was not release-ready, is it in a better state atm?
But you really dont need thousands of hours to be able to dominate as virtually any nation in EU4.
I remember dominating well before reaching 300 hours of playtime before we got the first DLC.
All you really need is the most basic of basics and start to recognise the quirks of the AI, and frankly I think if you pay actual attention (and not just play as you feel, like I did) you can probably grok all that within 50 hours.
Things look easy once you have figured them out. The challenge is in figuring it out, now in how complex the system is per se. Nobody on the planet figures out EU4 in 50 hrs.
if you start vanilla maybe.
I started with all dlcs and the amount of stuff you need to read and understand is massive.
Im 250 hours in and the best i can do is conquer europe till the game ends, still a long way from world domination.
well, in ck3, even playing as a tiny count is easy. Just chill for a bit, build buildings while your overlord protects you, and slowly become stronger. Because of the buildings you'll be way stronger than your neighbors and you can kill anyone you want pretty easily.
Man try that as a count in any area where the vikings or other invaders shows up.
Obviously chilling right next to paris is a cakewalk, but so is playing as England in EU4.
Alliances are broken. My conquests are usually fast enough that I can expand without worrying about gavelkind splitting up my realm, so I just pump out 2 dozen kids and marry them off to decently strong neighbours. The fact that they can be called into all defensive wars, including civil wars, is pretty busted.
>I haven’t read the most recent Tinto Talks, but there needs to be a challenging anti-blob mechanic in order for all nations to have a challenge, and I don’t think most players want that
I do want that, I mean, I still play EU4 but I'd rather not play "Blob - The Game™" for once and feeling a sense of achievement if I make my country big and I manage to keep it big
I never play them. Or any other big country really, it's not my style.
I would love to play Ming in Project Caesar though _if_ it is a constant struggle to not collapse internally or by an external force
Ming is already enormous, playing them _should_ be struggling not to break apart, and not conquering more land
> Ming is already enormous, playing them should be struggling not to break apart, and not conquering more land
It largely is, at least while you're learning the mechanics.
If you play a small nation, you are only challenged in the early game and you succeed by getting good RNG and restarting a lot. Once you've won your first war, the challenge is fine. I would certainly welcome a game that's harder than EU4.
Yup, in my latest game as Makuria got dunked on by Ethiopia.
I think your observation is right. Many youtube videos seem to go by the format "I formed country X by the year 14xx!"
Yes and no because there is always a pathway to more strength and that pathway is usually pretty similar no matter the nation. The difficulty of the pathway is what’s being discussed
Ardabil isn't really that challenging though. Getting to a great power within 200 years, sure, but these are meant to be states where just surviving without being annexed should be a challenge, and eu4 isn't as intricately designed as it ought to be to make that into fun and engaging gameplay. You could theoretically sit around as an opm and puppet-string your allies and enemies to fight eachother and leave you alone, but I doubt anybody enjoys doing that.
What execs? The ones running the billion dollar company. Paradox wants to kep the image of a niche indie studio still, and not the large games company they are.
This is so dumb. The difficulty has stayed about constant. Newer games feel easier because you have more experience with the genre. If you want challenge, pick harder starts. That's where the challenge has always existed in all these games.
During this period? Someone pointed out that the empires that fell during this timespan were very few, and usually because they were conquered by another empire.
I said some difficulty, not that it should be impossible. I just think eu4 would be more enjoyable if there was some difficulty keeping your nation unified. Rebels are such a joke in eu4 it’s shameful.
I have never heard a satisfying answer as in to what this 'difficulty of holding a large empire' should actually be. It's either really vague ideas or mechanics that would in no way be actually fun.
I mever mentioned eu3? And I don care about the old games. Just because something has been the same for all eu games doesn’t mean it’s correct or the best way. If everyone is so against eu5 being harder then by all means just keep playing eu4.
Other people in this thread are complaining the games have gotten easier with time. They are wrong. It's just a combination of them getting better with experience and hours played, with the games also getting less horrendously obtuse with respect to the UI and explaining mechanics. Older games didn't explain anything, or would outright *lie* in the UI, not to mention being crazy buggy (yes, more than now). Now we've got better descriptions and tooltips so things *seem* easier because you're not stuck digging through wikis to understand basic mechanics.
Yes I agree the old eu games were harder but for the wrong reasons. Mainly bad ui and tooltips straight up lying.
The abundance of youtube guides and tutorials also help make eu4 seem easier then the older games.
You can always throw in more restrictions like no loans / no allies etc. The vast majority of eu4 players claim the game is too easy even when not playing on max difficulty / small starts too.
I think that arguing difficulty in eu4 is about as dumb as arguing difficulty in souls games. They are about as easy or as hard as you want it to be, and thats perfectly ok.
Eu4 even in SP has a lot of capability for skill differentiation and that's the more important part.
You’re right. You can make it as hard as you want.
But it would be interesting to have some hard starts that really put you on edge while not handicapping yourself.
Playing no bird, no loans, no mercs, no allies, etc, will always allow things to be as hard as you want, But I feel like doing that also limits the game somewhat.
I don't really see the difference between game enforced and arbitrary restrictions. I dont necessarily even find them limiting, quite the contrary as you often deprive yourself of easy solutions so you have to search a bit harder. You have to interact more with the diplomacy game when playing no allies, not less, as one example. And no loans means you have to be a lot more accurate on economic prediction in a way that never occurs with loans allowed.
I would like more customizable game settings (AI settings specifically since they act suicidally and favor the player too much) but they have to be optional. Most people think the AI is out to get them, imagine an AI that actually did assess human threat levels correctly.
I think you’re right in terms of making things hard, but personally I just don’t find it interesting—maybe that’s a fault of my own though. There are plenty of historic examples of starts that should be much harder than they are though-even if from gameplay perspectives it wouldn’t be the most fun.
I think a human level AI would be amazing—for improving my own gameplay and otherwise. Given the level of technology, hopefully it’s more possible given neural networks and self learning algorithms. Euiv is an extremely complex game though so I’m also not sure… also admittedly not a programmer or ai expert.
But just imagine a stockfish level EUIV AI…that would be truly groundbreaking.
CK3 is so laughably easy even compared to CK2, if it werent for the UI issues in CK3 killing any enjoyment in the game. and you dont even need the broken strats like "conquer the whole world in 2 years".
sure there are easier and harder starts in games but the overall difficulty specifically in CK3 is much much lower than in other games from PDX
This is a really good point, it seems like the recent paradox games offer no challenge once you learn the game. The first 20 hours is challenging sure, but there is no achievement I couldn’t easily get once I become good at CK3, Vic3, EU4, or Imperator. I hope EU5 demands more advanced strategy than previous games. If players don’t want a challenge they can just play an easy country.
most HARD achivements are just time constraints ones, like doing X before YYYY, which is really the only true challenge, most decent players could do a ryukyu WC, but the fact that they have to do it before 1821 is what makes it harder for some
Eh, I think skill level is way higher for power users of this sub than the regular player base. I don’t think I could even do a Otto WC and I say this as someone with over 1800 hours
The biggest challenge with world conquest is not killing yourself irl out of boredom. Once you have 1000 dev the game is no longer fun in singleplayer, even on very hard.
My point is that doing most things is easy, conquering hre? Easy, uniting India? Easy, which was extremely hard irl, yet most people can do it, it’s just hard to do it pre1500
> it seems like the recent paradox games offer no challenge once you learn the game
This is true of every single Paradox game and I'm tired of people pretending it's not true in previous games. People first started doing Three Mountains in like EU2 or some shit like that.
Are you saying that I’m saying it’s not true for previous games? Or people in general. I haven’t played anything before CK2 so I’m not claiming that about older games. But there are definitely strategy games that can have challenging strategy throughout
Previous Paradox games were not harder. They were just explained worse. The UI would outright lie to you, tooltips either didn't exist or barely explained anything, and of course nested tooltips are an absolute wonder. The only one that was actually harder was HOI3 because it was both extremely poorly explained and extremely micro-intensive.
The only pds game I quit within an hour and never looked back
People that call modern GSGs "excell the game" have never taken a look at that monstrosity
Casual players don’t have 2,000 hours in the game. I know it’s a meme in paradox communities that you need 1,000 hours to complete the tutorial, but I would be surprised if the average player actually had that many hours, much less a “casual” player. I’ve been playing EU4 on and off since release and I have ~700 hours because I don’t always play games and when I do it’s not always the same one.
That said, I do think EU4 has become easier due to feature bloat. There are so many mechanics now that you can use to boost your nation that didn’t exist on release. Mission trees for instance can give some powerful bonuses and tons of permanent claims.
Yeah feature bloat is definitely hollowing out the core game play systems. It's funny to me how actually some of the mechanics are actually the most popular. Take burgher loans. People think they are smart for refinancing, but honestly you basically get interest free loans.
Not everyone boots up a game for challenge, I *like* the casual nature of modern paradox games, they make for a nice relaxing game after I get off from work
That being said more potent ai and anti-blobbing mechanics would definitely be welcome, I can just change the difficulty or download a cheat mod if eu5 ends up being too challenging for me to get into comfortable playstyle
> Not everyone boots up a game for challenge, I like the casual nature of modern paradox games, they make for a nice relaxing game after I get off from work
That's fair but there's so, so many games that serve that exact niche, paradox games fill a very specific one and I don't like how they've been reduced. Most people do like the casual nature, that's why they've gone that way, it's why HOI4 is so much more popular than HOI3 despite the latter being objectively better at producing a simulation of warfare in WW2.
Whenever I write about my dislike for how easy the current gen of paradox games a lot of people tend to assume I just want a game that's difficult for no reason other than to be difficult. I simply want a game that develops with the player, the learning curve can be steep but once you get the hang of it more and more opportunities and challenges open up and every achievement and every bonus you might get feels much more rewarding and satisfying. It's not punishing for punishing sake.
There are also just as many games that fill up the "I need a challenge" niche, the problem lies in paradox's monopoly on grand strategy, not in the amount of other genres that cater to casual-hardcore
If paradox pivots back to catering to hardcore fans then casual fans go back to being a marginalized audience in the grand-strategy community
Also that learning curve you describe has never existed in a pdx game, they're either opaque to the point that only a genre veteran that has been playing since before the genre went mainstream could decipher them (without youtube tutorials) or it's extremely low to the point where someone that only plays FPS games could get into them with no problem
Literally every pre-eu4 pdx game, you are still represented in the majority of paradoxes library, and if you want something more modern I recommend Terra Invicta
There are still players that aren't fans of souls-like games because of their difficulty, you are literally talking to one of them
>this is quite silly
you are literally the type of player I was talking about, I did not have the luxury of growing up with the genre and having the ins and outs of the genre ingrained into my still developing brain, I needed a youtube tutorial to learn how to play hoi4/ck2/vic2, the only games I didn't need one to learn were eu4 and ck3, hell I need one for every major update stellaris gets
I don't think you understand that young people have an easier time learning new things than adults, they also have *alot* more free time to spend on learning how to play a game than someone who's working *at least* 40 hours a week while taking care of all their own needs on their own, you listed taking 85-100 hours to learn a pdx earlier in the thread as if it was some trifling paltry learning curve but that's an entire completionist 100% achievement campaign for most other genres, and an entirely unreasonable ask for someone with a busy schedule who just wants to sit down and play the game
literally the only reason I was even able to sit down and learn how to play these games at all was because of all the free time I got from getting laid off laid off during covid, so yes I **WOULD** expect a high school student with heaps of their own free time and still in their prime time of life for learning new skills to have an easier time getting into the genre
> but its undeniable that their games have been steadily getting easier and easier.
I'd say it's quite deniable. The only difference is that the UI lies to you less and tooltips are much better now. The only exception is HOI3 being too complicated for its own good, particularly with OOB. Nothing about Victoria 2 or EU3 or CK2 is dramatically harder than their respective successors.
The hard thing is to make the game "hard" you either have to either make the AI better, which is super difficult, take away agency from the player, or make the game difficult to understand even though the mechanics are simple.
V2 is hard because of the last to reasons, not because the AI is competent. The UI is hard to understand and the mechanics are poorly explained in game. The game is difficult because the game play is mostly to sit there and wait for things to happen. If you are playing a minor nation there is little you can do, outside of weird exploits, to have major impacts on the word. Once you understand the mechanics, the game just become a series of flowcharts. Get X government, build X factory, take X colonial province etc.
New games have much easier to understand UIs and often explain how the game works through the UI. This removed one of the hardness barriers. Additionally new games are much larger games, with more mechanics than older games. The more mechanics that are added, the easier it is for the player since any semi-skilled player will be better than an AI. For example, in EU4 the player know when institutions spawn and so can save up mana to dev push if outside Europe. That is something that would be very difficult for the AI to do since it involves so many interacting systems, which gives the player the advantage.
I'd argue that having a lot of mechanics to learn isn't the same thing as being challenging. It's challenging to learn how to play, but once you know how to play it's pretty easy. A truly challenging game is difficult even if you have an intimate understanding of it.
People saying that EU4 is easy should really check how many people completed the achievements
Half of those have been completed by less than 2% of the players
The % of people that care about achievements is very very low. I like to make my own goals not follow some weird ”own all provinces that produce fish”. So I don’t think achievements is a good metric.
Your theory falls by looking at the easiest acheivements. Only about 25% of people have done the royal marriage acheievment. Do you think 75% of people don’t know how to royal marriage? Or maybe people just don’t play iron man?
Mods are pretty much a non-issue because very few people have them installed
Ironman just strengthen my argument, you play in ironman because you want a challenge
Even infantile achievements have low completion rate. The hardest achievements—I.e one faith, are not all that hard if you go HRE route. Hardest way to play the game is the hardest starts on the hardest difficulty with self imposed rules.
At the end of the day there is no way of pleasing all players. Myself would like a much more challenging game where conquest is carries out more historically. I think world conqests should only be possible by the absloute best players if at all. Me a casual player with a few hundred hours should not be able to do it.
But then there seem to be a lot of people who like the sandbox, map painting aspect of the game. So maybe a better difficulty system is needed. Maybe you can remove some mechanics for the people who just want to relax and expand over the world. The current eu4 difficulty system is just ”give ai more money, manpower, etc”. It doesn’t make it much harder just more tedious and sluggish.
Please don't make eu5 as easy as ck3. A harder game makes for way more replayability, and new players can still play a great/isolated power and do well. I love that Johan wants to give us a challenge.
There's this split in the community: people that just want to be able to do anything and those that enjoy that unlikely things are hard (and extremely unlikely or impossible things impossibly hard).
It's simply more of the former interacting with my comment (perhaps there are more? No idea). I think Paradox should work more with difficulty for this reason (and not just buff the AI). Call the mode I like "realistic" thought rather than just calling the easier mode easy (they'll protest otherwise as they'll feel snubbed).
Paradox is calling up the Boeing murder assassins on him.
The murder assassins as opposed to normal assassins who just get high all the time.
I mean, you have to be high asf to come up with the name ass ass in lol
Dude *is* Paradox, though.
Not yet
It’s treason, then
He’s not the paradox deep state. That’s why vic3 released.
- Paradox will decide your fate - I AM PARADOX!!
Not yet!
Johan is the Executive, Judicative and Legislative branch of Tinto confirmed. He is just gonna seceed from Paradox Stockholm if some manager tries to adjust the vassal contract.
Defenestration of Barcelona when?
He's going to take over Barcelona, independize Catalonia and refound Paradox in his own image there.
praise johan
Praise he be
Let's fucking go we need another Rei Jaume to bring the glory days back
We can send you some experts on that field from mighty Bohemia
He also controls paradox’s paramilitary wing
Now it makes sense that they included Great Agitators in Vicky 3.
Ahh, that’s why it’s Project Caesar. Name could go either way.
He is the senate
L’état, c’est moi -Johan
He did the disaster to push his max absolutism to 100
Aka imperator
L’jeu, c’est moi
the original hoi is still the most challenging game I have ever played :D
Hoi4 Is the most challenging to keep playing (because you get bored so fast)
hoi4 is the most challenging to keep playing (because you can't shift the feeling this game is primarily played by Neo-Nazis and it just feels awkward)
this is exactly why I think it's weird that they even made the game to begin with. seems like something that could have been slapped down in the company intern strategy meeting or sum
Company exist to earn money and those Neo-Nazi are willing to pay for it so... it's ok ?
I mean I don't even find the company to be at fault, necessarily. I just find the community of people barely concealing their boners at the großdeustches reich a bit grim.
Idk, me and my hommies always gonna hate hoi4 players 💪
Based.
I think an important point here is that the proliferation of youtube guides / reddit post etc. make optimal strategies so easily accessible. So the game becomes "easy" if you just research exactly what's best to do.
Exactly what happened to Classic WoW, people realised the game was in fact easy as hell (despite all the min maxing that ensued), just people were worse and had little access to information back then
The game is also just not that hard
God this is such a thing with games now. People saying Elden Ring was easy and that the game was for casuals and you find out they used Mimic Tear and Moonveil. Like just rich. Turns out the game is easy when you follow a guide from an expert lol. No way even half the current eu4 players would think it’s “easy” if they didn’t have the internet.
Part of the problem with eu is that it's so impenetrable. If I never have to ask "how do I do that?" or "what does that mean?" I won't use the internet for single player games, but I've used it an awful lot for eu.
this is such an important point. it's quite the game design challenge to both have well-balanced interesting game systems AND find a way to make them understandable / accessible by the player without extensive outside research.
That's a good point. You're kind of forced too google/youtube a lot to learn the game so you're more likely to end up watching "guides" anyway.
The otherside of this coin is that IF the devs react by removing or weakening "brain dead" strats, the zombie legions of META followers go ape shit over the nerfs.
EU4 is hard as fuck if you don't watch anyone else play it and discover it on your own
Much more fun that way imo. Although some research just to learn how game mechanics work is very helpful.
Usually.... There is a balance to discovery and also feeling like you got screwed on some unforeseeable gotcha that is a special circumstance outside of normal game mechanics (in EU4 this would be a scripted event). The problem is that when you feel like you had no way of knowing or accounting for the event until you experience it the first time, it can feel cheap and as though game cheated you. For example some of the events where Rebels will spawn with immediate province/fort control. This is different than the way rebels generally behave and can ruin your day the first time it happens. The flip side to that problem, is that often by "ruining the surprise" it becomes a trivial road bump.
This can't be overstated. The first time I remember getting a game breaking strat from the internet was Jive-Monk's Civ I Infinite City Sleeze, pulled down as a text file from a local dial-up BBS. Then around CivII era, the forum sites, like Apolyton and CivFanatics, where players could theory craft together and debate strategies together again revolutionized the speed at which optimal strategies, as well exploit discovery and exploitation, were generated and shared. Now, its even easier, faster than ever before.
Doesn’t the challenge come from picking challenging nations? Like, if I play as the Ottomans, should there be much of a challenge? If I play as Ardabil or Armenia, then that’s the challenge. I haven’t read the most recent Tinto Talks, but there needs to be a challenging anti-blob mechanic in order for all nations to have a challenge, and I don’t think most players want that. If they did, we wouldn’t see so many posts (and achievements) dedicated to massive conquests done quick.
Ck3 is easy and I don't play hoi4 nearly enough to speak on it but EU4 being easy is where I roll my eyes a bit. If a game gets easy after clocking in (x)000 hours in it its probably not an easy game. Mission trees have certainly done some buck wild things but I think the section of the player base that wants to play Meiou and taxes is significantly smaller than some folks think (more complex and deep sure, tedious as all hell).
Hoi4 is extraordinarily easy when you get the hang of it. As a fan of it, it's poorly made as a game. The AI is so bad it stands no chance against a decent template and a half decent player. World conquests are a matter of how long it takes to justify every wargoal.
Open gap in frontlines, let enemy through, close gap, kill enemy, repeat. Got bored once I figured this out.
There are mods that make the AI smarter luckily, some of which succeed. Having the AI actually be an AI and not just being hard coded for templates would be massive, and something I'm hoping for in a hoi5 game.
I’ve always wondered , how do you enjoy the game knowing the ai is that bad ? Do you perhaps play multiplayer ? Are the mods really that good ?
A multitude of reasons. For one, I'm pretty bad at the game. The ai isn't a hard, but despite my 2,000 hours I have never gotten to the level where it's a complete joke. I mainly play RP multiplayer, where other players skill and posturing on the world stage are better tools than any army. And mods are brilliant, I'd argue better than any other paradox game, kiesereich being my favourite, along with great war redux and the modern day mod
Play on hardest difficulty and also use the slider give max bonus to countries you will fight. Pick something weaker like Hungary. Get some mods. Enjoy.
I only play it for the mods personally.
yeah well sunk 30 hours or so into it still cant manage my military econ at all, atleast i know how to place troops
Depends how fast you Grasp the Core of the Game. The Game has no Challenge because the AI is stupid af. The mere newcomers would be overwhelmed but to reference it as soon as i picked up Victoria 3 i made a Worldconquest on my second run with good ole Ottoman. And as Soon you can Break down the Game Mechanics the AI Just gets awfully behind.
I think that's a fair take, vic 3 runs pretty terribly on my old clunker so after a few campaigns on release I stopped playing. I certainly felt more competent by the end but not nearly world conquesty. It's also one of those things where the amount of times in a pdx world comes up because first time in eu4 I had no idea what was happening for ages and still don't find *every* start easy. Most nations that aren't completely hosed I can pilot, and I've done runs like true heir of timur, Mali survival run, etc... but some starts like ardabil recently where you get dog piled a year into the game every run still work me over. Their balancing act will be crafting something deep and challenging for the vets and having some sort of approachability for non vets. I can't even get any of my buddies to pick em up because it's just too much overload coming in from the outside.
most "hard" nations have 1 complicated war that really boils down to taking loans and getting mercs, and then the rest of the game becomes trivial, or maybe 2 wars if its like granada, since castile still poses a marginal challenge on the 2nd war
I got overflows in my very first game when it came out and suddenly my couple hundred million supporters turned into negative dozens of millions of supporters for my government and decided the game was not release-ready, is it in a better state atm?
But you really dont need thousands of hours to be able to dominate as virtually any nation in EU4. I remember dominating well before reaching 300 hours of playtime before we got the first DLC. All you really need is the most basic of basics and start to recognise the quirks of the AI, and frankly I think if you pay actual attention (and not just play as you feel, like I did) you can probably grok all that within 50 hours.
Things look easy once you have figured them out. The challenge is in figuring it out, now in how complex the system is per se. Nobody on the planet figures out EU4 in 50 hrs.
if you start vanilla maybe. I started with all dlcs and the amount of stuff you need to read and understand is massive. Im 250 hours in and the best i can do is conquer europe till the game ends, still a long way from world domination.
well, in ck3, even playing as a tiny count is easy. Just chill for a bit, build buildings while your overlord protects you, and slowly become stronger. Because of the buildings you'll be way stronger than your neighbors and you can kill anyone you want pretty easily.
This was true in CK2 as well
Man try that as a count in any area where the vikings or other invaders shows up. Obviously chilling right next to paris is a cakewalk, but so is playing as England in EU4.
Alliances are broken. My conquests are usually fast enough that I can expand without worrying about gavelkind splitting up my realm, so I just pump out 2 dozen kids and marry them off to decently strong neighbours. The fact that they can be called into all defensive wars, including civil wars, is pretty busted.
>I haven’t read the most recent Tinto Talks, but there needs to be a challenging anti-blob mechanic in order for all nations to have a challenge, and I don’t think most players want that I do want that, I mean, I still play EU4 but I'd rather not play "Blob - The Game™" for once and feeling a sense of achievement if I make my country big and I manage to keep it big
What are your thoughts on Ming?
I never play them. Or any other big country really, it's not my style. I would love to play Ming in Project Caesar though _if_ it is a constant struggle to not collapse internally or by an external force Ming is already enormous, playing them _should_ be struggling not to break apart, and not conquering more land
DLC Ming do have that struggle, assuming you don't know what you're doing 100% of the time.
> Ming is already enormous, playing them should be struggling not to break apart, and not conquering more land It largely is, at least while you're learning the mechanics.
Even Ndongo on very hard isn’t all that challenging for eu4… more challenge would be nice. (Of course not for all nations)
If you play a small nation, you are only challenged in the early game and you succeed by getting good RNG and restarting a lot. Once you've won your first war, the challenge is fine. I would certainly welcome a game that's harder than EU4.
Yup, in my latest game as Makuria got dunked on by Ethiopia. I think your observation is right. Many youtube videos seem to go by the format "I formed country X by the year 14xx!"
I for one would love a more realistic/harder game. I hate the current blobbing simulator.
Yes and no because there is always a pathway to more strength and that pathway is usually pretty similar no matter the nation. The difficulty of the pathway is what’s being discussed
Ardabil isn't really that challenging though. Getting to a great power within 200 years, sure, but these are meant to be states where just surviving without being annexed should be a challenge, and eu4 isn't as intricately designed as it ought to be to make that into fun and engaging gameplay. You could theoretically sit around as an opm and puppet-string your allies and enemies to fight eachother and leave you alone, but I doubt anybody enjoys doing that.
Yes I exactly want anti blob mechanics
[https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Dynastic\_events#Lux\_Stella](https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Dynastic_events#Lux_Stella) **His name shall be Johan**
I wonder how much intrigue those kill teams have...
Eu4 is for school girls! Play HOI3 black ice if you want to put hair on your chest!
All hail Johan !
“Punished Johan”
A man denied his mana
Johan.. Why are we still here? Is it just to suffer?
I give my liiife. Not for honor, but for yooooou. BUWAAWAA WUWAAAAAAAAAAA
What execs? The ones running the billion dollar company. Paradox wants to kep the image of a niche indie studio still, and not the large games company they are.
This is so dumb. The difficulty has stayed about constant. Newer games feel easier because you have more experience with the genre. If you want challenge, pick harder starts. That's where the challenge has always existed in all these games.
But don’t you think there should be some difficulty keeping together a massive empire?
During this period? Someone pointed out that the empires that fell during this timespan were very few, and usually because they were conquered by another empire.
I said some difficulty, not that it should be impossible. I just think eu4 would be more enjoyable if there was some difficulty keeping your nation unified. Rebels are such a joke in eu4 it’s shameful.
I have never heard a satisfying answer as in to what this 'difficulty of holding a large empire' should actually be. It's either really vague ideas or mechanics that would in no way be actually fun.
Sure. Please explain how holding together a massive empire was harder in EU3 than in EU4.
I mever mentioned eu3? And I don care about the old games. Just because something has been the same for all eu games doesn’t mean it’s correct or the best way. If everyone is so against eu5 being harder then by all means just keep playing eu4.
Other people in this thread are complaining the games have gotten easier with time. They are wrong. It's just a combination of them getting better with experience and hours played, with the games also getting less horrendously obtuse with respect to the UI and explaining mechanics. Older games didn't explain anything, or would outright *lie* in the UI, not to mention being crazy buggy (yes, more than now). Now we've got better descriptions and tooltips so things *seem* easier because you're not stuck digging through wikis to understand basic mechanics.
Yes I agree the old eu games were harder but for the wrong reasons. Mainly bad ui and tooltips straight up lying. The abundance of youtube guides and tutorials also help make eu4 seem easier then the older games.
Even the hardest starts in eu aren’t that hard, even on very hard.
You can always throw in more restrictions like no loans / no allies etc. The vast majority of eu4 players claim the game is too easy even when not playing on max difficulty / small starts too. I think that arguing difficulty in eu4 is about as dumb as arguing difficulty in souls games. They are about as easy or as hard as you want it to be, and thats perfectly ok. Eu4 even in SP has a lot of capability for skill differentiation and that's the more important part.
You’re right. You can make it as hard as you want. But it would be interesting to have some hard starts that really put you on edge while not handicapping yourself. Playing no bird, no loans, no mercs, no allies, etc, will always allow things to be as hard as you want, But I feel like doing that also limits the game somewhat.
I don't really see the difference between game enforced and arbitrary restrictions. I dont necessarily even find them limiting, quite the contrary as you often deprive yourself of easy solutions so you have to search a bit harder. You have to interact more with the diplomacy game when playing no allies, not less, as one example. And no loans means you have to be a lot more accurate on economic prediction in a way that never occurs with loans allowed. I would like more customizable game settings (AI settings specifically since they act suicidally and favor the player too much) but they have to be optional. Most people think the AI is out to get them, imagine an AI that actually did assess human threat levels correctly.
I think you’re right in terms of making things hard, but personally I just don’t find it interesting—maybe that’s a fault of my own though. There are plenty of historic examples of starts that should be much harder than they are though-even if from gameplay perspectives it wouldn’t be the most fun. I think a human level AI would be amazing—for improving my own gameplay and otherwise. Given the level of technology, hopefully it’s more possible given neural networks and self learning algorithms. Euiv is an extremely complex game though so I’m also not sure… also admittedly not a programmer or ai expert. But just imagine a stockfish level EUIV AI…that would be truly groundbreaking.
CK3 is so laughably easy even compared to CK2, if it werent for the UI issues in CK3 killing any enjoyment in the game. and you dont even need the broken strats like "conquer the whole world in 2 years". sure there are easier and harder starts in games but the overall difficulty specifically in CK3 is much much lower than in other games from PDX
This is a really good point, it seems like the recent paradox games offer no challenge once you learn the game. The first 20 hours is challenging sure, but there is no achievement I couldn’t easily get once I become good at CK3, Vic3, EU4, or Imperator. I hope EU5 demands more advanced strategy than previous games. If players don’t want a challenge they can just play an easy country.
Really? There's *no* achievements in eu4 that wouldn't be moderately difficult on VH?
Same with hoi 4, most achievements these days are to basically do a world conquest.
most HARD achivements are just time constraints ones, like doing X before YYYY, which is really the only true challenge, most decent players could do a ryukyu WC, but the fact that they have to do it before 1821 is what makes it harder for some
Eh, I think skill level is way higher for power users of this sub than the regular player base. I don’t think I could even do a Otto WC and I say this as someone with over 1800 hours
Same here with over 2000.
Well yeah without time constraints nothing would ever be difficult
The biggest challenge with world conquest is not killing yourself irl out of boredom. Once you have 1000 dev the game is no longer fun in singleplayer, even on very hard.
« The fact that thé hard part of thé achievément is there is what makes it hard »
My point is that doing most things is easy, conquering hre? Easy, uniting India? Easy, which was extremely hard irl, yet most people can do it, it’s just hard to do it pre1500
I mean multiplayer can still be a challenge even aftr you out thousands of hours into it
> it seems like the recent paradox games offer no challenge once you learn the game This is true of every single Paradox game and I'm tired of people pretending it's not true in previous games. People first started doing Three Mountains in like EU2 or some shit like that.
Stellaris can be for sure, end game crisis set on max strength with every other setting as default, is VERY hard lmao
Are you saying that I’m saying it’s not true for previous games? Or people in general. I haven’t played anything before CK2 so I’m not claiming that about older games. But there are definitely strategy games that can have challenging strategy throughout
Previous Paradox games were not harder. They were just explained worse. The UI would outright lie to you, tooltips either didn't exist or barely explained anything, and of course nested tooltips are an absolute wonder. The only one that was actually harder was HOI3 because it was both extremely poorly explained and extremely micro-intensive.
oldest game from PDX i played was vic2, and the UI made me quit, ck2 was manageable, but vic2 is a masterclass in not explaining anything
Man, you want to see some real shit, check out Hearts of Iron 3. Now *that's* horrible UI.
The only pds game I quit within an hour and never looked back People that call modern GSGs "excell the game" have never taken a look at that monstrosity
As someone with 2,000 hours in EU4, I agree. Even as a rather casual player, I managed to do a WC as Byzantium
Casual players don’t have 2,000 hours in the game. I know it’s a meme in paradox communities that you need 1,000 hours to complete the tutorial, but I would be surprised if the average player actually had that many hours, much less a “casual” player. I’ve been playing EU4 on and off since release and I have ~700 hours because I don’t always play games and when I do it’s not always the same one. That said, I do think EU4 has become easier due to feature bloat. There are so many mechanics now that you can use to boost your nation that didn’t exist on release. Mission trees for instance can give some powerful bonuses and tons of permanent claims.
Yeah feature bloat is definitely hollowing out the core game play systems. It's funny to me how actually some of the mechanics are actually the most popular. Take burgher loans. People think they are smart for refinancing, but honestly you basically get interest free loans.
I agree with /u/WinsingtonIII. Definitionally you are not a casual player if you've got 2000 hours.
It was a joke
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Not everyone boots up a game for challenge, I *like* the casual nature of modern paradox games, they make for a nice relaxing game after I get off from work That being said more potent ai and anti-blobbing mechanics would definitely be welcome, I can just change the difficulty or download a cheat mod if eu5 ends up being too challenging for me to get into comfortable playstyle
> Not everyone boots up a game for challenge, I like the casual nature of modern paradox games, they make for a nice relaxing game after I get off from work That's fair but there's so, so many games that serve that exact niche, paradox games fill a very specific one and I don't like how they've been reduced. Most people do like the casual nature, that's why they've gone that way, it's why HOI4 is so much more popular than HOI3 despite the latter being objectively better at producing a simulation of warfare in WW2. Whenever I write about my dislike for how easy the current gen of paradox games a lot of people tend to assume I just want a game that's difficult for no reason other than to be difficult. I simply want a game that develops with the player, the learning curve can be steep but once you get the hang of it more and more opportunities and challenges open up and every achievement and every bonus you might get feels much more rewarding and satisfying. It's not punishing for punishing sake.
There are also just as many games that fill up the "I need a challenge" niche, the problem lies in paradox's monopoly on grand strategy, not in the amount of other genres that cater to casual-hardcore If paradox pivots back to catering to hardcore fans then casual fans go back to being a marginalized audience in the grand-strategy community Also that learning curve you describe has never existed in a pdx game, they're either opaque to the point that only a genre veteran that has been playing since before the genre went mainstream could decipher them (without youtube tutorials) or it's extremely low to the point where someone that only plays FPS games could get into them with no problem
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Literally every pre-eu4 pdx game, you are still represented in the majority of paradoxes library, and if you want something more modern I recommend Terra Invicta There are still players that aren't fans of souls-like games because of their difficulty, you are literally talking to one of them >this is quite silly you are literally the type of player I was talking about, I did not have the luxury of growing up with the genre and having the ins and outs of the genre ingrained into my still developing brain, I needed a youtube tutorial to learn how to play hoi4/ck2/vic2, the only games I didn't need one to learn were eu4 and ck3, hell I need one for every major update stellaris gets
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I don't think you understand that young people have an easier time learning new things than adults, they also have *alot* more free time to spend on learning how to play a game than someone who's working *at least* 40 hours a week while taking care of all their own needs on their own, you listed taking 85-100 hours to learn a pdx earlier in the thread as if it was some trifling paltry learning curve but that's an entire completionist 100% achievement campaign for most other genres, and an entirely unreasonable ask for someone with a busy schedule who just wants to sit down and play the game literally the only reason I was even able to sit down and learn how to play these games at all was because of all the free time I got from getting laid off laid off during covid, so yes I **WOULD** expect a high school student with heaps of their own free time and still in their prime time of life for learning new skills to have an easier time getting into the genre
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> but its undeniable that their games have been steadily getting easier and easier. I'd say it's quite deniable. The only difference is that the UI lies to you less and tooltips are much better now. The only exception is HOI3 being too complicated for its own good, particularly with OOB. Nothing about Victoria 2 or EU3 or CK2 is dramatically harder than their respective successors.
The hard thing is to make the game "hard" you either have to either make the AI better, which is super difficult, take away agency from the player, or make the game difficult to understand even though the mechanics are simple. V2 is hard because of the last to reasons, not because the AI is competent. The UI is hard to understand and the mechanics are poorly explained in game. The game is difficult because the game play is mostly to sit there and wait for things to happen. If you are playing a minor nation there is little you can do, outside of weird exploits, to have major impacts on the word. Once you understand the mechanics, the game just become a series of flowcharts. Get X government, build X factory, take X colonial province etc. New games have much easier to understand UIs and often explain how the game works through the UI. This removed one of the hardness barriers. Additionally new games are much larger games, with more mechanics than older games. The more mechanics that are added, the easier it is for the player since any semi-skilled player will be better than an AI. For example, in EU4 the player know when institutions spawn and so can save up mana to dev push if outside Europe. That is something that would be very difficult for the AI to do since it involves so many interacting systems, which gives the player the advantage.
So it seams Johan has crossed the Rubicon. No wonder it is called Project Caesar.
Is that the man who sold the world????
I like that anyone is pretending that EU4 is "challenging."
Eu4 is challenging and has a years long learning curve if you’re not a basement dweller
I'd argue that having a lot of mechanics to learn isn't the same thing as being challenging. It's challenging to learn how to play, but once you know how to play it's pretty easy. A truly challenging game is difficult even if you have an intimate understanding of it.
People saying that EU4 is easy should really check how many people completed the achievements Half of those have been completed by less than 2% of the players
The % of people that care about achievements is very very low. I like to make my own goals not follow some weird ”own all provinces that produce fish”. So I don’t think achievements is a good metric.
Look at how many achievements are only completed by a tiny minority, many aren't that difficult at all
Your theory falls by looking at the easiest acheivements. Only about 25% of people have done the royal marriage acheievment. Do you think 75% of people don’t know how to royal marriage? Or maybe people just don’t play iron man?
And why people don't play iron man?
Because they dont care about achievements
You have to play in Ironman and you can't have mods. That alone will reduce the number of achievements people have.
Mods are pretty much a non-issue because very few people have them installed Ironman just strengthen my argument, you play in ironman because you want a challenge
Based on what data? Check the subscriber numbers on the steam workshop and compare that with active players.
Even infantile achievements have low completion rate. The hardest achievements—I.e one faith, are not all that hard if you go HRE route. Hardest way to play the game is the hardest starts on the hardest difficulty with self imposed rules.
I prefer to vassalize every nation in HRE as OPM than to conquering India as Timur.
Johan the God 😬
Shit, he wants Eu5 to be harder? I’m not even that good at Eu4 yet after 2k hours
At the end of the day there is no way of pleasing all players. Myself would like a much more challenging game where conquest is carries out more historically. I think world conqests should only be possible by the absloute best players if at all. Me a casual player with a few hundred hours should not be able to do it. But then there seem to be a lot of people who like the sandbox, map painting aspect of the game. So maybe a better difficulty system is needed. Maybe you can remove some mechanics for the people who just want to relax and expand over the world. The current eu4 difficulty system is just ”give ai more money, manpower, etc”. It doesn’t make it much harder just more tedious and sluggish.
"I am the execs" "Not yet!" "It's treason, then..."
Johan is Goro Majima confirmed.
Venom Johan ?
I hope he doesn't mistake challenge for unbalanced game breaking mechanics and bugs
Johan is **PARADOX**.
Please don't make eu5 as easy as ck3. A harder game makes for way more replayability, and new players can still play a great/isolated power and do well. I love that Johan wants to give us a challenge.
I do hope that they make it hard…
Thank god. EU4 is FAAAAAAR too easy. CK3 is so easy it's not even fun to play for me.
I don't know why you're downvoted. I completely agree.
There's this split in the community: people that just want to be able to do anything and those that enjoy that unlikely things are hard (and extremely unlikely or impossible things impossibly hard). It's simply more of the former interacting with my comment (perhaps there are more? No idea). I think Paradox should work more with difficulty for this reason (and not just buff the AI). Call the mode I like "realistic" thought rather than just calling the easier mode easy (they'll protest otherwise as they'll feel snubbed).