Life Cycle of an EU4 Player

[Der Dutchman]

I wonder if my 700 hours with the game mirrors other's experiences

Start:
Play an easy country (Portugal, Spain, England, Austria, Ottoman) to get the hang of things
Play a powerful country within the HRE (Bohemia, Austria, Brandenburg)
Play powerful countries with goals of forming a nation (e.g. Poland to Commonwealth, Muscovy to Russia)
Play less powerful ones doing the same (Savoy to Italy, Holland to Denmark, etc)
Play a small nation in the HRE (E.g. Ulm to Emperor!)
Play a small nation outside the HRE (Nepal Space Marines!)

And here... something really gets weird, so I wonder if others feel the same way...

I then stopped playing difficult nations. What I found was I could "win" and become a super power with pretty much anyone (Well, still haven't pulled off the whole Albania thing, but most OPMs I have tried go pretty well).

Instead I started focusing on really random crazy things: The colonizing super power of Ternate, the super papal point generating Italy, forming a giant trade blockade as Africa/Middle East....

When I ran out of crazy things to do I ended up where I am today: I now play middle-of-the-road powers. Recently Savoy, Burgundy, Bengal, etc. What I found was while I could play a "more challenging" empire like Ferrar, Nevers, or Taungoo as examples of mirrors to the above, the reality is they're not that much more difficult, they're just... boring. It becomes a game of waiting for an opportunity as opposed to a game of making opportunities. Whereas going back and playing a super power like Muscovy or France is just mind numbing "do whatever I want."

Anyone else feel the same? Like, many hundred hours in and you've run low on "clever things" you just end up playing the middle-power nations?

[Jaffa]

Автор сообщения: Rommel

I focus more on blowing up the superpowers like france and ottomans, nothing more satisfying than tearing down france as savoy or conquering china with malaya.

Being English, there's nothing more refreshing than squashing those peddly French heathens...

[Orxan]

Автор сообщения: Jaffa

Автор сообщения: Rommel

I focus more on blowing up the superpowers like france and ottomans, nothing more satisfying than tearing down france as savoy or conquering china with malaya.

Being English, there's nothing more refreshing than squashing those peddly French heathens...

its not about being english.ottomans and french are just most OP pain in ass so beating them is always feelsgood

[Miles]

Автор сообщения: Der Dutchman

When I ran out of crazy things to do I ended up where I am today: I now play middle-of-the-road powers. Recently Savoy, Burgundy, Bengal, etc. What I found was while I could play a "more challenging" empire like Ferrar, Nevers, or Taungoo as examples of mirrors to the above, the reality is they're not that much more difficult, they're just... boring. It becomes a game of waiting for an opportunity as opposed to a game of making opportunities. Whereas going back and playing a super power like Muscovy or France is just mind numbing "do whatever I want."

Anyone else feel the same? Like, many hundred hours in and you've run low on "clever things" you just end up playing the middle-power nations?

Yes

[DarkFenix]

I've pretty much followed that exact cycle so far. New player, but I started off playing England on normal to get the hang of things (console commands to bail me out of tight spots). Second I played Brandenburg (which fills both item 2 and 3 on the list) and graduated to ironman. Now I'm precisely looking for a weaker power that can form a larger nation (tried Jianzhou but didn't like them).

[Noir]

played as Serbia when I started the game, now playing something like France just becomes too easy to quickly. Japan was a lot of fun as well, as they offered colonization, but that was somewhat underwhelming in the end. I did learn playing by watching quill18 on youtube, he made a great tutorial.

[Der Dutchman]

Автор сообщения: DarkFenix

I've pretty much followed that exact cycle so far. New player, but I started off playing England on normal to get the hang of things (console commands to bail me out of tight spots). Second I played Brandenburg (which fills both item 2 and 3 on the list) and graduated to ironman. Now I'm precisely looking for a weaker power that can form a larger nation (tried Jianzhou but didn't like them).

Dutch is pretty much always a favorite. Holland is the obvious choice to form them, but Flanders is the more challenging one.

Outside the HRE, depending on the expansions you can try Uzbek which forms Burkara / Mughal and is constantly threatened by Muscovy and later the Ottomans (usually).

Pretty much anything in Italy is fun too to form Italy, and the Papal State gets some fun stuff.

Ethiopia doesn't form anything but is still sorta in the same style of reforming the 'empire'

Or Sweden -> Scandenavia (just don't take their ideas, Sweden is amazing)

[Pozz]

Автор сообщения: Jaffa

Автор сообщения: Rommel

I focus more on blowing up the superpowers like france and ottomans, nothing more satisfying than tearing down france as savoy or conquering china with malaya.

Being English, there's nothing more refreshing than squashing those peddly French heathens...

There's a reason To-lose is a city in France :p

[EW08]

Since I started playing I didn't want to play nations which already started out really strong. The only one I ever did was Poland -> PLC and in that playthrough I had the goal of fighting the Ottomans and Russia right from the start; almost no expansion westward into Europe.

Most of my games are weak to middle power nations. I've also just graduated from save-scumming. I'm on my first Ironman playthrough as Milan and I think I'm having my craziest game ever.

I was able to form Italy (yay me!) but then, we have France. First, France and Scotland wrecked England. He was able to evacuate to the new world so he's still alive but won't be a big player anymore. I was able to then ally France when I was still a bit weak for some protection. Then somehow, France got elected HRE emperor and he put all of his provinces in the HRE. The Age of Absolutism just started then suddenly, I notice I'm in a war. No notice even popped up. Apparently, there's war of succession for Poland, which is under a PU to France right now. Spain is contesting, Russia intervened on its side, but I'm on France's side of the war (I'm the 8th Great Power) along with the Ottomans and some other mid to strong powers. I think our side outnumbers theirs like 3 to 1. If (more like when) we win this, France will be stronger than anyone by miles. I dunno how I'm gonna fight them in the future. haha

[Illyrien]

I enjoy the achievements, they really send you all over the world, trying to so amny different thing.

[CondorDrake]

I keep digging out EU IV from time to time and start another world conquest run, but sadly it's impossible with the up to date version so I get frustrated at some point and move away from the game again for a couple of months. Other than that, I went through roughly the same experience as the OP

[Illyrien]

How is world conquest impossible? While I have not done it in 1.22, I did do it in 1.21

[woNflA]

i usually (in paradox game mostly) just achievement hunt, it may not be as fun as it sounds but i love this game (800 hours). And achievement hunting is really fun depending on the achievement

[Fellini_Fiend]

I am an achievement hunter like many others. I had a similar start to my time with this game only I got to a difficult start pretty early on. I went with an easy casual colonization game as Castile/Spain with almost nothing to do with continental Europe. After that I did my first ironman game as Brandenburg where I became emperor, went Protestant and formed Prussia (this back when you could still be Protestant and be emperor before any religious war mechanics were properly introduced) and then finished off by forming Germany. But then I went with a challenging start and only did it because I saw many tips on how to do it: I went started a game as Byzantium.

This was back in the pre-Art of War era of the game and back then if you blockaded a strait you blockaded it completely didn’t matter who controlled either side you blockaded it no matter what so the strategy was to pray Ottomans don’t attack you for the first five or so years and focus completely on building all the galleys you could so you could blockade the strait when the Ottomans are busy off doing something in Anatolia and then they had nothing they could do against you in the Balkans and you’d just wait to get enough warscore and take whatever you could and keep doing that until you’ve taken all of their holdings across the strait before eventually going for Anatolian clay. It was a good time for Byzantium. Thankfully while I was doing that campaign the Art of War patch and dlc came out which introduced autonomy to the game that you could raise to make rebellions happen less often than previously and actually had a way of predicting when they would pop up. Back then unrest was completely unpredictable and would seemingly rise up exactly when you didn’t want them to.

After that one I can’t remember which nations I played but I’ll always remember those first three campaigns.

[👅 f r e a k y c y r u s 👅]

I like playing harder nations for achievements (Athens for example) or middle tier countries that usually fall apart or die quickly (Qara Qoyunlu/Mamluks for example)

I've also taken an interest lately to playing as released vassals such as Leon. You get to see some colors and flags you don't normally see.

[Risen Wukong]

i have never really played a powerful country or a country that later gets great powerful ideas, My first ever game was with tyrone because my hometown is carrickfergus Northern Ireland, after i learnt some mechanics i started doing achievement runs but pbviously trying the hardest ones, the only powerful start nation i ever played properly with out scamming an early achievement like lithuanias marshy march achievement i think was Denmark for that achievement run other than that i have always played a weaker nation to start and only going powerful nations to scam early achievements this iw what killed HOI4 for me tho was because that game only promotes playing a powerful nation were in EUIV you can start as weak as Ceylon and still manage to conquer. And of course after i formed bigger nations i stopped doing the playthrough like germany italy etc