My opinion, after 166hours of gameplay.

[[Q]uik]

So, my opinion after 166 hours of playing Europa Universalis 4.

Plain and simple: This is the weakest, of the 3 paradox titles i've played.
Compared to Victoria 2 this game is shallow like a rainpool of water.
and compared to Crusader kings 2 - it's still shallow.

In Victoria 2 you have a in depth and very logical economy which you can directly impact all the time.
in EuIV you got simple "upgrade buildings" and.. 2 sliders .everything else is affected by well - random events.
basicly.

in Crusader kings 2 you can affect economy by being on board with your vassals - of course you can also "upgrade buildings" in the same manner as EUIV, but there's still MORE to the economics than "build buildings and send my navy out to protect trade".

The technology system is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bullocks - mostly because it doesnt add anything. The way you acquire new buildings JUST makes the game slower and even more of a "watch the game flow by" kind of game and the military tech is so linear that it becomes really ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

"oh I got a new tech, let's just equip the best soldiers then! ; )"
In victoria you can build a wast variety of soldiers that all fit different things. The only way to to that in EUIV is by.. well.. mercenaries.

the only way to "gain" a larger military pool in EUIV is to "expand" and conquer new land. in Victoria? you tell your citizens to become soldiers. or in CK2 you flirt with your vassals or build buildings (because the buildings do affect this in a MUCH more major way in CK2 than in EUIV)

not to mention that in EUIV THERE ARE NO POLITICS. Like at all.
in Vicky 2 there's lots of politics - which makes you care alot more about what's going on. and in CK 2 - well it's a politics and intruige simulator.

EUIV has NOTHING going for it compared to either of the other games - other than "colonization" - which, due to the incredibly bad economical system, is horrible.
oh and yeah it happens to be set in the most amazing of dates in history.



On a side note - I do feel that Paradox completly missed the point of the military aspect of their games, after Victoria: Rev..

all in all - this game is so shallow it's not even funny and i'm probably gonna stick with CK2 or VC2 until some guy decides to make a complete makeover of this game (like that's ever gonna happne)

I'm sorry Paradox Interactive, but I feel you're leaning too much towards your "casual players", and have somewhat forgotten about us who already know how to play your games.

[Shin]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Quik:

I think they did many wrongs with Vicky 2, compared to the first victoria, but with the expansions and the POP mod, it's absolutly quite good. The AI - military, is complete bullocks though :/ In vicky 1 the first priority for the AI was to defend the land - which led to HISTORICAL dugin-lineups, now, if you line your soldiers up - they'll take ANY oppurtunity to just go around you. Which is booring /playing with the POP mod so the dugin is actually a factor\

But, Vicky 2 mostly improved upon everything - the politics is great, the economics are fantastic, the "crisis" stuff is quite nice too. The military is - as with EUIV, EU3 etc complete bullocks though - no idea what went through paradox's head here.

"The combat is too static. let's make it more random and remove all defensive and offensive buffs except for mountains!"
"naah, still too random. Throw in river crossing aswell!"
"PERFECT"

yeah, perfect... i still have absolutly no idea wether I can actually beat the enemy or not, so i'm basicly playing Risk. *roll dice - aww, too bad, roll again.*

It really doesn't work that way... I'm 300+ hours into EU4... and battles can be won with proper planning. If you have no idea, with all due respect, you're not understanding the mechanics completely then.

[Shin]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von warthog11112:

It also handles expansion and military a lot better. WIth all the new rules to both. Which what a surprise is the focus of EU4.

It is fine to not like mechanics but to say the game sucks because they do not foucs on the things you personally want them too is not going to get you anywhere.

I agree with this, the Expansion mechanics really are far better this time around.

[[Q]uik]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Surlaw:

EVERYTHING YOU WANT WILL BE RELEASED.

In the next DLC pack for $9.99 :)


@All the anti-Victoria fanatics trying to wank for Eu4:

Victoria 2 was not hard to learn. Because you lacked proper IQ points, Europa Universalis 4 is an incredibly dumbed-down game.

Soo what you're saying is that the next DLC pack will improve upon everything? ; )

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Orcon:

There are no "anti-Victoria fanatics" here. Just people who have sunk hundreds of hours into each game and are dicussing the pros and cons of each.

this^ :3

well, atleast - we can so far agree that EUIV is the least complex of them all?

Well, for me here's how it is - I was intruiged by vicky 2, because it's the most complex world domination game i've yet to play, and I approached EUIV because I was hoping to get some of that, in a more intruiging time setting - quite disappointed that I didnt find any :/ That's essentially it. As far as I see it - EUIV feels like "Paradox for newbies", which would be fine BEFORE I would victoria :/

[[Q]uik]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Shin:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Quik:

I think they did many wrongs with Vicky 2, compared to the first victoria, but with the expansions and the POP mod, it's absolutly quite good. The AI - military, is complete bullocks though :/ In vicky 1 the first priority for the AI was to defend the land - which led to HISTORICAL dugin-lineups, now, if you line your soldiers up - they'll take ANY oppurtunity to just go around you. Which is booring /playing with the POP mod so the dugin is actually a factor\

But, Vicky 2 mostly improved upon everything - the politics is great, the economics are fantastic, the "crisis" stuff is quite nice too. The military is - as with EUIV, EU3 etc complete bullocks though - no idea what went through paradox's head here.

"The combat is too static. let's make it more random and remove all defensive and offensive buffs except for mountains!"
"naah, still too random. Throw in river crossing aswell!"
"PERFECT"

yeah, perfect... i still have absolutly no idea wether I can actually beat the enemy or not, so i'm basicly playing Risk. *roll dice - aww, too bad, roll again.*

It really doesn't work that way... I'm 300+ hours into EU4... and battles can be won with proper planning. If you have no idea, with all due respect, you're not understanding the mechanics completely then.

I'm fairly sure I got the mechanics but please, surprise me.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Shin:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von warthog11112:

It also handles expansion and military a lot better. WIth all the new rules to both. Which what a surprise is the focus of EU4.

It is fine to not like mechanics but to say the game sucks because they do not foucs on the things you personally want them too is not going to get you anywhere.

I agree with this, the Expansion mechanics really are far better this time around.

They are fine but certainly not good by any aspect. "Conquer, press "core", send a missionary if possible" I mean it really isnt that hard, to manage it to be honest.

although, the trade system shows promise, it hasnt gotten me to go "Ooh slaves, let's get more of that to increase my income!"
It's more like
"Ooh, a province, let's get that to increase my income!"
Because AFAIK, there's almost no way to know what materials are worth more than any other - and it's more about "trade domance" which, to me, is silly. Trade should be about maximizing income, not getting a silly "+5% bonus to random stuff"

[Foshizo]

Victoria 2's economic system was bloated, buggy, and almost unfunctional unless you fetishized micromanagement on a giant scale.

CK2 is one of the worst games I've ever played, period.

I have around 70 hours of EU3 and about 100+ hours of Victoria 2. I think EUIV is fairly good; it's certainly an improvement over the others. Yeah, the combat still sucks balls through a straw, but that's Paradox military systems for you. No Paradox strategy game has EVER had a good combat system.

[[Q]uik]

Well, I certainly do have a certain fetish ffor micromanagement on a giant scale. Absolutly - that's essentially why I play real time strategy aside from Turn based (Civ) games.

I feel Victoria Rev had a pretty decent combat system - well, atleast I had full control over what was going on (On that note, I absolutly prefer the static combat system of Victoria: rev, than the newer "dynamic dice roll" systems)

[Foshizo]

The dice roll systems do help support the natural randomosity of battles and their numerous factors, but Paradox has handled them wrong and never fixes them. The dice rolls have never been random nor have the other battle mechanics; on Normal difficulty, battles in Paradox strategy games have always either favored the player too much (EU3 in many cases, Victoria Rev, Pride of Nations) or favored the AI too much (EUIV, Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2, Europa Universalis Rome). What results is either a combat system that is boringly easy to win or a combat system that is frustratingly unfair, respectively.

It's like, for some reason, Paradox never wants the AI and player to have equal footing. One must always outdo the other.

[Melrik Birch]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von {Triarii} Richon:

In Crusader Kings, the focus is dynastic intrigue and religion, so that is the most fleshed out part of the game. In Victoria, the focus is on economy, immigration, and politics, so that is where the game is most fleshed out. In Hearts of Iron, the focus is on combat, and that is where the game is most fleshed out. The Europa Universalis series is about empire management.

THANK YOU. Finding this statement made a very new person to the series' very happy. It is not easy finding a statement like this. It's not what's advertised in the media slicks. I also am a proud owner of many of Paradox's titles. I should have stock options! Anyway, I kept looking at the games from a n00b standpoint and thought to myself. This is the same game as 'X' but set in a different era or region. I never had gotten into the games enough to know the difference. Now when my mood takes me into a certain area I'll know which game to play as I have almost no time in any of them due to the above mentioned reasons. i.e. If I don't feel like dealing with religion then i won't play CK.

[Nats]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Surlaw:

EVERYTHING YOU WANT WILL BE RELEASED.

In the....[snipped out insults].... dumbed-down game.

What an insulting post in an otherwise intersting thread. I bet you are really well liked by society for your valuable insight.

[Zevrow]

The random events are ending and many other problems that I and others can fix in our mod named Versanus will stop all that dribble, we intend to implement politics into the game and have redone literly everything to do with the event system so I can assure you, none of those stupid events will happen in Versanus unless you cause them to happen. Versanus is in development at: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?729682-Versanus

[Nats]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zevrow:

The random events are ending and many other problems that I and others can fix in our mod named Versanus will stop all that dribble, we intend to implement politics into the game and have redone literly everything to do with the event system so I can assure you, none of those stupid events will happen in Versanus unless you cause them to happen. Versanus is in development at: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?729682-Versanus

The main problem I have with large 'game correcting' mods like this is that they usually have a few good ideas, but they spoil it by including loads of other things that dont need changing. I have experienced that with a lot with mods in the past for the Total War games (for example the realism mod for RTW). But Darth Vader got it right for his superb large ETW, NTW and STW2 mods when he added customisability - so you could pick and choose what you wanted. I wouldnt apply a large mod to any game now unless it has some 'customisability'.

Actually the fact that Darth has stopped making mods for TW games is a major reason why I wont touch RTW2. CA has certainly lost out a lot of custom for their most recent game due to their lousy approach to Darth's past work. The idiots. I'm not the only person, I am sure, wondering what RTW2 could become if Darth got a hold of it and corrected all of CAs usual arcade action orientated rubbish.

[The Silver Santana]

Ah, here's one thing EU IV has over those other games-it's playable.

Idiot OP is idiot. Don't bait the flame war.

[[Q]uik]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von The Silver Lion:

Ah, here's one thing EU IV has over those other games-it's playable.

Idiot OP is idiot. Don't bait the flame war.

Read the thread ; ) While I was extremely negative in my first post - I can't honestly call this a flame war.

I can't agree with your point though - how are the other ones not playable?

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zevrow:

The random events are ending and many other problems that I and others can fix in our mod named Versanus will stop all that dribble, we intend to implement politics into the game and have redone literly everything to do with the event system so I can assure you, none of those stupid events will happen in Versanus unless you cause them to happen. Versanus is in development at: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?729682-Versanus

This does sound a lot interesting.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von prince, The Fresh #Ironic:

The dice roll systems do help support the natural randomosity of battles and their numerous factors, but Paradox has handled them wrong and never fixes them. The dice rolls have never been random nor have the other battle mechanics; on Normal difficulty, battles in Paradox strategy games have always either favored the player too much (EU3 in many cases, Victoria Rev, Pride of Nations) or favored the AI too much (EUIV, Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2, Europa Universalis Rome). What results is either a combat system that is boringly easy to win or a combat system that is frustratingly unfair, respectively.

It's like, for some reason, Paradox never wants the AI and player to have equal footing. One must always outdo the other.

This is not my problem with the dice system though, it's that it's TOO MUCH dice. You USUALLY have -1 stat, giving the dice a 1-5 playroom, which is ridiculously random. I want more ways to "manipulate" the dice, if say - Fortresses gave +1 to +2 i'd be extremely happy - but they dont. The only way for me to manipulate the dice is with the leaders - but that's not really what i'm looking for either.

[Kagemin]

All in all the dice only have very little effect with all the other modifiers that can apply (not to mention that it evens out), they are only there to make a difference in otherwise perfectly even battles. Which is pretty much never.

And starting a thread saying "I don't like it, so it's bad" is a sure way of baiting...

Edit: Oh, and they use a d10, not a d6.

[[Q]uik]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kageryuu:

All in all the dice only have very little effect with all the other modifiers that can apply (not to mention that it evens out), they are only there to make a difference in otherwise perfectly even battles. Which is pretty much never.

And starting a thread saying "I don't like it, so it's bad" is a sure way of baiting... :fmad:

Edit: Oh, and they use a d10, not a d6.

d10? really?
... noooo isnt ... is it?

And I didnt intend to bait - I was genuinly thinking the game is "worse than the others" and kinnda still do.