I just moved from EU1 to EU2....

[meme7832]

I can't believe I ever complained about EU1 on here. That game is fantastic. I just finished my first campaign and conquered everything except for maybe 40 of Spain's provinces, 7 unannexable capitals, and a lot of neutral provinces. I realize now that I was nitpicking in every complaint about that game, even calling it great while criticizing it and lamenting how Total War wasn't as complex, forcing me to play this instead....

EU2 however, is basically the same exact game as EU1, except that they:

1. Added missionaries. These guys MIGHT change a province's religion, for an amount of money equal to about ~4x as much as Spain makes annually AFTER promoting all bailiffs. I'm sure they'll be useful in the future... after the game is essentially already won. Imagine charging an entire country 4x its GDP to preach the clown words of the "lord" or w/e.

2. Changed it such that Spain can only have 38k troops total. If you have 1k more troops than 38k, those troops will cost you more than the 1st 38k combined (3k additional troops on top of max will literally more than double your monthly military maintenance expense - yes it's that stupid). How is it that ONE SINGLE PROVINCE can have a supply limit allowing for 80k troops, but your entire country (including that province) can only support 38k? It's just so dumb.... I tell myself it's just a game mechanic to make the game harder, but still. It's stupid. You literally start the game as Spain with 41k worth of troops and lose 8 ducats per month b/c of this. If you disband 3k troops right off the bat (which I learned to do on my 2nd playthrough on Day 1, believe me), then you only lose 2 ducats per month.

3. Added random events. Each one that I've seen has either automatically lowered my stability, caused revolts, or both. Revolts wouldn't be much of a problem, except for the fact that my revolt risk was 0% each time. Also, see the 2nd change they made to this game. You can't just keep a lot of troops in each province. You can't even keep 5k troops in each province (as Spain at the start). This basically renders supply limit obsolete. Every enemy province I'm surrounded by can support about half of my entire army and if this is like EU1, then by the end of the game each of these provinces will be able to hold my entire army.

4. Changed the music... which now has vocals. These vocals have no range. They're high-pitched and sound somewhat like children. They're the worst. Why would a repetitive videogame soundtrack have vocals? Who wants to hear the same person saying the same thing every 9 minutes, even if the vocals were good? Videogame music should be atmospheric and feel like it's mostly just in the background, like EU1 music which was perfect. I didn't even realize quite how good EU1's music was until I heard this in comparison. This is unbelievably bad music for a videogame and I say this as someone with a really open mind and a collection of 800 vinyl records of varying genres including death metal, hardcore, punk, folk, techno, and noise rock, so I'm really no stranger to bad vocals and don't judge music based on the vocals. It's just too repetitive for the short soundtrack to a videogame, especially one that I plan on playing for hundreds of hours. I won't be surprised to find I've gone insane after a few months of this.

5. Expanded it from 300 years to 400 years. This is a good thing I believe, but maybe by the time I'm finished it'll just be TOO MUCH time. I'll prob have every province in the world.

6. You can annex major countries now. Obv another good thing and easily the best change. I'd be happier if this was the only change.

7. Added ~70 nations. They basically just turned some multiple province nations into multiple nations of 1 province each. It's supposedly more historically accurate for 1419 but really, who knows the state of 160 nations in the year 1419? How many players can actually, truly appreciate this change? I'm happy for the historians who can appreciate this fact. Most of those other nations will be absorbed by their neighbors by the time you reach them anyway though, so it's not much of a difference gameplay-wise (at least in Europe before the game is already won, supposedly they add a lot of nation in America).

8. They added a lot of domestic policy sliders. You get to change 1 slider by 1 notch every 10 years. It'll be like, "Decentralized government" on 1 end of the slider and "Centralized government" on the other. Hilariously, they'll explain in detail what it means for a gov to be centralized before letting you know the only effect of the slider... which is that to the left, technology costs more to research while units cost less to maintain and the further right you move the slider, tech costs less and units cost more. I wish I was kidding. This may be a SLIGHT exaggeration, it's based on memory.

Oh yeah, and I'll send 30k troops against 7k rebels and lose even though the supply limit is well over 50k. When I would lose a ton of troops in EU1, I eventually found out why. Supply Limit. I know that sounds like EU 101, but I was new.... Now that I understand that, I have no idea why this is happening to me again. I solved this problem last game. I see no different mechanics though, so I don't know wtf is going on. I figure I must need canons/cav, however, an ingame tip told me that cav was worthless in mountains and cannons are WAY too expensive at the beginning of the game. I should not have to send 30k trained professional troops against 7k revolting peasants multiple times to take them out. It's absurd. Almost as absurd as 30k people revolting in 3k population provinces in EU1, but I've forgiven the preceding game by now. Maybe I'll forgive this game after getting into it.... I don't see it happening though.... I don't like most of these changes.

I finished EU1 without savescumming a single time. I never had to load if I took a major hit in battle. That can't happen here though. If I get a bad die roll, that can be gameover b/c I only have 38k troops. In the beginning of EU1, I kept starting over with the realization that I would need to amass a much bigger army before starting any wars. I eventually settled with something like max armies in every province and then steamrolled everyone as Turkey. Necessary savescumming in a TURN BASED GAME though? Sounds like a terrible game to me. I refuse to resort to that and will probably quit in disgust b/c of this. Only bad game design can explain necessary save scumming. I've already restarted a few times. I'm not sure I'm going to finish this one.

What blows my mind is the consensus. EVERYONE says EU2 is strictly better than EU1. That seems like a sick joke for now.

[conjurerdragon]

EU 2 is better than EU1. Just like FtG is better than EU2.

In each step the game has more options and more commands and triggers for events and modding.

[meme7832]

Originally posted by conjurerdragon:

EU 2 is better than EU1. Just like FtG is better than EU2.

In each step the game has more options and more commands and triggers for events and modding.

They didn't only "add options." They no longer allow me to have more than 38k troops. This removed the decisions about how many troops to train and there's not much else to spend money on.

[conjurerdragon]

Originally posted by meme7832:

They didn't only "add options." They no longer allow me to have more than 38k troops. This removed the decisions about how many troops to train and there's not much else to spend money on.

Nonsense. The game has no fixed upper limit of troops - it only makese them more expensive if you hire more soldiers than your provinces are able to provide. Remember that the game goes over hundreds of years and soldierrs are not immortal. While the game has soldiers dying in battle and dying because of attrition when marching it does NOT substract from your armies due to soldiers aging beyond being able to fight - instead it places a soft limit on your army size. Hire more soldiers than your provinces can provide (and replace due to aging) and the upkeep will get more expensive.

There are several simple ways:
1) Do NOT hire more than you can upkeep with the normal upkeep cost. Most small countries don´t have enough leaders for several armies anyway.

2) Concentrate to get provinces with grain. Grain provinces add +5000 as far as I remember to your manpower.

3) get allies

There is not much to spend money on? Sure - at the start of the game when your country still has a technology level of 0. Most buildings become only available if you do research.

However that was EU2 and this forum is about FtG...

[meme7832]

Originally posted by conjurerdragon:

Originally posted by meme7832:

They didn't only "add options." They no longer allow me to have more than 38k troops. This removed the decisions about how many troops to train and there's not much else to spend money on.

Nonsense. The game has no fixed upper limit of troops - it only makese them more expensive if you hire more soldiers than your provinces are able to provide. Remember that the game goes over hundreds of years and soldierrs are not immortal. While the game has soldiers dying in battle and dying because of attrition when marching it does NOT substract from your armies due to soldiers aging beyond being able to fight - instead it places a soft limit on your army size. Hire more soldiers than your provinces can provide (and replace due to aging) and the upkeep will get more expensive.

There are several simple ways:
1) Do NOT hire more than you can upkeep with the normal upkeep cost. Most small countries don´t have enough leaders for several armies anyway.

2) Concentrate to get provinces with grain. Grain provinces add +5000 as far as I remember to your manpower.

3) get allies

There is not much to spend money on? Sure - at the start of the game when your country still has a technology level of 0. Most buildings become only available if you do research.

However that was EU2 and this forum is about FtG...

Right after saying there's no upper limit to army size, you suggest not hiring more than the upkeep limit b/c of course you can't have decent sized armies. The first 38k troops cost me about 2 ducats per month. 3k more troops beyond that and I'm losing 6 ducats per month iirc - that's not close to reasonable. I can't have max troops in every province like I could in EU1.

A single province in my state has a higher supply limit than my entire state combined, including that province. That's obviously ridiculous and there's really no defense of this.

In a recent playthrough, after conquering Granada, I got attacked by England, Aragon and 4 others who had over 60k troops combined, constantly attacking me. I was keeping the war close enough but then a random event caused 25k peasants to revolt. I had to restart the game shortly after.

In the next game, I tried to start the same exact way - annexing Granada first (I'm Spain). This time the dice rolls were different, I guess. I did everything the same but had to restart quickly b/c Granada just crushed me even though I did everything exactly the same. It's funny b/c in the first game, their allies sent a bunch of nuisance troops at me and I even had to retake a province from one of their allies. In the 2nd game, their allies didn't even send enough to lay siege.

In EU1 I never had to savescum b/c if I lost battles I could just send more troops. It's looking like I'm going to have to savescum in EU2 if I want to win though. I think I'm just going to put the game down for now.

EU1 was better. The max army of 38k wouldn't ruin the game by itself. But throw in these random events that constantly lower my stability and cause revolts and the game is entirely ruined.

I didn't even mention how the max army size will actually fluctuate, seemingly randomly. I guess season might have something to do with it lowering on me.... Or maybe when my provinces are looted. Either way, it's annoying.

OH YEAH! One more thing... in my most recent game, my success rate for colonizing The Canary Islands was 95% and it just kept succeeding every time. In the previous game, the success rate started lower and never got that high - also colonizing failed 3 times with a success rate around 85%. I can understand the variation in success... but variation in the success rate? WTF was that?

[conjurerdragon]

Originally posted by meme7832:

...
Right after saying there's no upper limit to army size, you suggest not hiring more than the upkeep limit b/c of course you can't have decent sized armies.

No, because of saving money. One can have an army over the support limit if you save a warchest during peace - but only for a limited time until you run out of money. Large armies are expensive. You do remember to put your armies on 50% maintenance during peace to save money?

The first 38k troops cost me about 2 ducats per month. 3k more troops beyond that and I'm losing 6 ducats per month iirc - that's not close to reasonable. I can't have max troops in every province like I could in EU1.

Then that means that EU1 was unrealistic as large standing armies, especially at the start of the game in 1419 simply did not exist and EU2 and FtG try to make it more realistic and thus harder to have huge armies early.

A single province in my state has a higher supply limit than my entire state combined, including that province. That's obviously ridiculous and there's really no defense of this.

The supply limit of a province is used by all armies in that province - it does not hurt to have a limit higher than your army and it helps if you have an ally who marches through your province in addition to your own army. It means that armies will suffer attrition if they are larger than the supply limit of the province - it has nothing to do with the maintenance cost.

Some countries (e.g. Muscovy) can take advantage of having provinces with lower supply limits that become even lower during winter - they can have the enemy siege until he lost a lot of soldiers and attack in the next spring.

In a recent playthrough, after conquering Granada, I got attacked by England, Aragon and 4 others who had over 60k troops combined, constantly attacking me. I was keeping the war close enough but then a random event caused 25k peasants to revolt. I had to restart the game shortly after.

I assume you played Spain? Or still Castille? How fast did you conquer Granada? Two wars? How high was your badboy?

Just like you wait for an opportunity to strike, the AI countries look out for a fight - either if someone is weaker then them or if someone expands too quickly and looks like a threat.
So expand slowly and allow time and your monarchs diplomacy to slowly lower your badboy again.
And when you mention England, Aragon and 4 others - then I suppose that you did have an alliance that aided you too?

In the next game, I tried to start the same exact way - annexing Granada first (I'm Spain).

You mentioned that you were attacked by Aragon - so you can´t be Spain. Do you mean Castille?

This time the dice rolls were different, I guess. I did everything the same but had to restart quickly b/c Granada just crushed me even though I did everything exactly the same. It's funny b/c in the first game, their allies sent a bunch of nuisance troops at me and I even had to retake a province from one of their allies. In the 2nd game, their allies didn't even send enough to lay siege.

At the start of the game the armies are mostly similar in technology so random chance plays a larger role than later. Use your leaders to lead your armies, defend behind rivers and in mountains. Attack into plains with cavalry etc.

In EU1 I never had to savescum b/c if I lost battles I could just send more troops. It's looking like I'm going to have to savescum in EU2 if I want to win though. I think I'm just going to put the game down for now.

Eu2 is more realistic in that soldiers are harder to come by and so avoiding to lose them by fighting without a good plan (and allies!) can be suicide.

EU1 was better. The max army of 38k wouldn't ruin the game by itself. But throw in these random events that constantly lower my stability and cause revolts and the game is entirely ruined.

You get exactly *one* random event each year. Hardly gamebreaking...

I didn't even mention how the max army size will actually fluctuate, seemingly randomly. I guess season might have something to do with it lowering on me.... Or maybe when my provinces are looted. Either way, it's annoying.

Looted provinces have penalties for a while. Look at the province screen. e.g. it raises revoltrisk and more RR means less income and manpower available. Avoid having your provinces looted. Don´t fight wars when you can´t win. First plan how to win and that quickly and then start the war.

OH YEAH! One more thing... in my most recent game, my success rate for colonizing The Canary Islands was 95% and it just kept succeeding every time. In the previous game, the success rate started lower and never got that high - also colonizing failed 3 times with a success rate around 85%. I can understand the variation in success... but variation in the success rate? WTF was that?

You should read the manual, play through all the tutorials and read the beginners guide

https://eu2.paradoxwikis.com/Beginners%27_guides

The rate of success for colonization depends on *a lot* or factors.
e.g. the historical colonizers have a higher chance to succeed than say Bavaria.
The chance changes with your ruling monarchs administration rating - have a bad administrator and chances are lower etc...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/colonization-faq-v1-08.200085/

[meme7832]

Thanks for the lengthy reply. I do believe the only reason huge armies didn't exist in 1419 though is b/c there were no huge empires (if the game's map at 1419 is accurate, this must be true).

Even if your defense of small armies was based in fact, it's still flawed mainly b/c: even if it's unrealistic for Castille to have an army bigger than 38k, then it's surely unrealistic for a revolting province to have over 20k ppl revolting. That's half of what my entire empire can support, but this single revolting province can muster that? No way. If it COULD, then I should be able to get a MINIMUM of 20k troops from that 1 province. Simple logic. It shouldn't take my whole army multiple attempts to crush that rebellion either. A professional army losing to a group of peasants half its size is still a joke. There is no justification for a random event to cost me my entire army either. Although, at the time I complained about the random events, all of them seemed to be rebellions or stability hits (costing me tech advances and therefore the game eventually). Now, it seems like I just got very unlucky b/c that hasn't happened in an event in a long time.

You asked about allies.... I started with 1 diplomat. I went to war in my first game instead of getting an ally, but haven't made that mistake since. That 1 ally, Aragon, is the only one I can get though, b/c everyone else is allied with somebody that I don't want in my alliance b/c I plan to attack them next, or else they're too far away to be useful.

Adjusting the maintenance slider changes the upkeep from ~2 to ~1 ducat per month for 38k troops.... Every 1k additional troops costs another ducat. No way can that EVER be worth the money, not even close. 1k troops is nothing. 50% increased upkeep cost for ~3% more troops??? That's not a reasonable option. I don't imagine anyone would intentionally do that.

I didn't know there was such a stiff penalty for looted provinces. That's highly unfair considering that the only times I've had my provinces looted was when I invaded, crushed the army, and it retreated to one of my provinces.

The "badboy" thing is the -200 number, right? It starts at -200 with Granada and they're the only bordering country I have a Casus Belli against, so I'm always going to start the game going to war against them. Which is yet another thing that sucks, at least when comparing starting with Turkey in EU1 and starting with Castille in EU2. And yeah it requires 2 wars b/c they're a 2 province country. Which is another thing that sucks... if it was a 4 province country it would also still require 2 wars, but the provinces gained per war would be double what it is against a 2 province country. 2 province countries are really annoying for this reason and there's a lot of them on this map. In EU1 if you controlled everything that a nation owned, you got to annex it. In this game, you need a minimum of 2 wars for a country with more than 1 province... this already led to an annoying as F*&% situation: I reduced Portugal to 1 province... I waited 5 years... by the time 5 years was up, they had another province........... Do I have to reduce them to 1 province, make peace, then immediately go to war again, reducing my stability to -3, to take them out???

In regards to the colonization of The Canary Islands, Castille starts with them as a level 1 colony, all I did was keep sending colonists. Which I don't believe will lead to a profit for about a hundred years, considering I spent about 200 ducats turning it into a city which doesn't give me many ducats per year. This is actually another thing that sucks that I haven't touched on yet. In EU1, you only needed to send 7 colonists to turn a colony into a city. In this game, you need to send 10. The requirement to be a city changed from 700 to 1000. The cost to send colonists also seems unbalanced now b/c of this. Unless you think it's reasonable to not see a return on investment for 100 years.... That's with no fails, sending to a cheap nearby settlement with a 95% success rate! Later in the game, when we're talking about a settlement with a 35% success rate and a cost of 50+ ducats just to send 1 colonist??? You'll NEVER see a return on that before the game is over. That's just a money sink. I suppose I'll be reduced to using my colonists to set up trading posts eventually... although if the rest of the game is any indicator, I'm sure the success rate of the trading post, cost to set up, and frequency they get burned down at will also make them a net loss.

I guess... thanks for bringing up even more differences between the 2 games which also make the first game better.

[meme7832]

I just had another stability hit due to a random event, it feels as bad as it did last time. This one was more poorly timed too. It happened after I adjusted a policy slider (which also reduces stability). I'll be "researching" stability for the next 4 years now and this is going to cost me a bunch of money at the least and could even result in revolts... also due to the loss in tech it could end up costing me the game. Oh and btw, it was also in the middle of a war in which I was just chasing their army all over the place. Their army was reduced to 4k and they had nothing else. It tried to retreat to their capital... when they reached their capital, the size of the army automatically changed to exactly 20k. No, they were absolutely NOT training troops and if it was an event, it would have been in the game's msg log. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I actually think I remember this happening in EU1 too, but in EU1 it doesn't matter b/c an extra 16k troops is nothing in that game against my millions of troops. When I only have 38k, that's a big difference....

OH, and then I had to make peace which reminds me of another complaint: ofc the country I made peace with was nowhere near us and never took any action in this war. But I negotiated the peace deal with them... why should they even be allowed to sign away another country's province? So if this was a multiplayer game, as leaders of the alliances, we'd have all the say in what provinces go to whom and the wars would all end even if it was 6 countries per alliance spread all over the world? Every country should be able to remain in war if they want. Aragon's capital was even controlled by someone else when I made this deal in which Aragon got NOTHING and the country controlling Aragon's capital got nothing (however that country also had 1 of its provinces controlled by me).

I previously made a separate peace with Eire for a couple of their provinces so I was done with the war. I could have taken a province from Navarra but b/c Aragon got there first, I didn't want to help with the siege b/c 1) it would have been over the supply limit and 2) I was afraid that if the province was taken, it would go to Aragon, who I plan on going to war against eventually. The problem is that I have 0.0/3X badboy points and +>98 reputation with each of the countries that were just at war with me. I think we had positive relations before this too.... The point is that the initial war was started randomly and senselessly by the AI AND apparently making a deal while demanding no tribute will just remove all badboy points??? I kind of want badboy points so they declare war and I don't have to.

Needing to defend my lands + the unconnected land in Ireland + the Canary Islands has my troops spread out stupidly thin btw.

I'm sort of starting to appreciate the challenge but the game is definitely not objectively better than the first. It might be a better simulation, but it's not a more fun game.

[Celimaskaya]

Huge armies didn't exist because mass conscription wasn't a thing yet. the concept of conscripting the utterly poor and providing incentives for military service wasn't a thing back then.
Mass conscription came about during the French Revolution, only reason why they could field such a massive army and fight off the entirety of Europe. You're completely ignorant, right?
Not even Rome during its apex conscripted. During the early republic, only citizens, and landed ones at that, even if they were poor, were allowed to enter the legions. Even after the Marian reforms there wasn't conscription. Everything was voluntary and back then there was still the issue that military service in the legions was only for Roman Citizens, citizenship would be slowly but gradually expanded during the centuries, and that severely limited manpower. Even taking into account the Auxilia, military service was not mandatory.

Necroing this because ♥♥♥♥ it