Questions for EU4 players.......(how many hours did it take you.........)

[meme]

Im a new player, maybe 30 hours or so in now with hundreds of hours of research and watching you tube vids before i felt like i broke through with the basics enough to just have a go with the game. Im really enjoying it !
Im interested in your journey with EU4 just to try and give my self perspective regarding my journey into this "game" so i have some questions for any players of EU4 the more people that post and respond the more perspective it will give me and also im genuinley interested in seeing your answers if you play this game. If no one is interested, thats fine ill just delite the post.
Ill try to keep my questions as simple as possible and number them to get the most information in the easiest way.
Oh heres my review for this game IF your interested in my perspective and experience so far....
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198345506804/recommended/236850/

Thanks any response !

Questions.....

1 How many hours of research would you say you put into the game (if any) before you felt comfortable enough to play the game ?

2 How many hours into the game would you say it took before you felt like you knew the basics (well enough to play a game without looking up for more information) ?

3 How many hours into the game before you felt like (if at all) you have truly mastered this game 100% inside and out ?

Well there you go 3 pretty simple questions also interested in reading any comments you have generally with your experience with this game and your journey learning all the ins and outs and mechanics of the game.

Thanks again !

[Shai-Hulud]

1. I played CKII before I played this game, so I had a general feel for it. That being said, I massively failed in my first 5 or 6 games. Like closed the game after 5 or 10 years. I honestly thought I'd made a mistake getting the game.

2. I've honestly never stopped looking up information. It's pretty vast game. It was probably 30-40 hours in that I felt comfortable with the game, like not immediately losing. Having successful games with larger nations. Though going by my own current standards - it probably took 300 hours or more.

3. I have nearly 2,000 hours played. I'm far from a master. I see many forum goers who are more knowledgeable than I am on the intricacies of this game. You are right to think knowledge of game mechanics go a really long way towards your ability.

In my opinion this game is a matter of degrees. In reality a successful game is surviving. Once you become an experienced player you can worry about minimizing your mistakes and maximizing your opportunities. For example my first England game I United the isles and had a decent colonial game. Replaying that England game now, I would go about the entire strategy much differently. Things I accomplished in an earlier game I expect to accomplish almost unconsciously now.

Don't get discouraged if you aren't "mastering" things at the rate you think you should.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Europa_Universalis_4_Wiki

This will be your friend, not all information is current, and some of it will be DLC specific. But it is a starting point for more knowledge. There are some great youtubers too. I advise you to treat the YouTube playthroughs as guides rather than gospel.

Lastly, feel free to ask questions here. There are some really helpful folks here and I am routinely shocked at the amount of detailed information and advice they can provide.

My only real piece of gameplay advice is to learn when you should speed up the simulation and when you should slow it down. The biggest leap I have made gameplay-wise is slowing the speed of the game down at critical points. Particularly in wartime you will find a slower speed allows you to make far more efficient decisions.

Enjoy, try not to take it too seriously.

[tonypa]

1 - I learned the very basics of the game by not looking up any information, by jumping in and starting to play it. It took time but I feel it was very much worth it. I failed many, many, many times, and restarted the game again and again.

I still check wiki, there are numbers and conditions I would never memorize:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Europa_Universalis_4_Wiki

2 - 100+ I would say, but that does not mean I am not sometimes looking up information. I started with larger and stronger nations as this allows to ignore parts of the game I have no interest at (trade for example, still have no idea how it works). There has also been times I feel every run feels same as last one so I tried to spice things up with different combinations of DLCs and mods.

3 - 2500+ hours played and not even close to master anything.

About the "mastering" the game, I feel there are multiple reasons people play the game with different goals. There are players who mostly play to earn Steam Achievements, and as some of these are quite difficult, they also use every kind of bug, glitch, unintended behaviour and in general stuff that exist in the game, but is not perhaps the exact way developers had in mind.

There are players who only play the game to "paint the map". Faster expansion with eventually conquering the whole world is only thing they care about. These are also players you see in the forum constantly complaining about new mechanics intended to reduce blobbing speed. personally I feel both play as, and playing against huge blob, is terribly boring and strips the game from most of it's interesting features.

Also, as with many other games, role-players exist who just want to play for the imaginary story their nation experiences. Some will stick to the more historical world no matter what (who and where can colonize or which religion to follow) even when it makes the game more difficult. I kind of admire such players but tend to still try optimize stuff in the run, while also spending hours on the wikipedia reading about how events or nations evloved in real history.

[brian_va]

pretty much the same as above. surely someone is gonna pop in an say they mastered it after a few dozen hours, if thats true then good for them. the rest take a couple hundred to get a good grasp on the game to where you don't need guides as much as new players.

the wiki holds all the answers, you just need to understand how to get the info out of it that you are looking for. i'm nearly at a thousand, and feel i have a good understanding of things, i know why some things happened and other didn't, or at least know how to find the answers i need.

[meme]

Didnt really expect that anyone would reply to this....Jumbo and tonypa and brian, i really enjoyed reading through your numbers and where you feel you are with the game now....fascinating posts !

"2500+ hours played and not even close to master anything." (just wow ! made me smile :))

[pmpdadypenguinmn]

1. I watched about 50 hours of lets plays before I purchased the game. But when I'm not playing I usually will watch lets plays and the dev clashes as entertainment instead of tv.

2. I'm a quick learner so I picked up the basics pretty quickly, first game I had the standards down. But it took a few hundred hours before I really had most of the games mechanics down enough where I felt comfortable playing ironman. I'm always still looking things up and probably always will since there's so much information it's probably not possible to memorize it all

3. 1500 hours in and I'm still learning new things constantly. I still haven't even gotten around to playing as a horde

[meme]

pmpdadypenguimn.....nice one, yea i enjoy watching some of the play throughs too as much as playing the game.....

Enjoying this one at the moment......i like his style, he never comes accross like he know it all but nicely mixes in information with the roleplaying elements i think....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJaRqeuidlE&list=PLAApFmDUfwlexwLAMBzHyCbtnlYS631s_

[Cookie Monster]

I am so bad at EU4 compared to other Paradox games. It probably took me a few hundred hours of playing and watching videos just to figure out how to not get murdered in the early game. I can now survive on normal and build up my empire to at least some extent but everything I do is still sloppy as hell. I still barely even understand trade. There is just so much you have to learn in EU4. Compare it to HOI4 where all you need to do is build big 40 width divisions and get air superiority. It's like chess vs checkers.

[meme]

Sanalove......i enjoyed reading your thoughts on the game.....i just got my a@@ handed to me by Scotland playing as England lol.............