111 Hours in, and I just can't anymore.

[Zeromentor]

I've played this game for 111 hours. Created Germany a couple times, formed Ethiopia, Italy and took over all of the middle east as Russia. A couple Argentina runs that I lost interest in, and a few Mexico and USA games I never finished either.

But I just can't keep playing thanks to this pathetic war system. Long drawn out fronts that make wars take literal ages, or a dozen different fronts within miles of each other. Randomness at every turn during battles, where sometimes tech, numbers and economy mean nothing.

What was the final straw? I tried to grab the Algiers achievement, and for starting as Algeria, taking Tunis and Tripoli from the Ottomans over two wars while they lost to Egypt, I somehow drew the incredibly neutral ire of the UK. Where once they couldn't care less about my existence, with a reputable reputation (-2.6 anyway), they suddenly decided they wanted Tunis, and to split my nation in half.

So we begin a pitiful war, them and their massive list of puppets and domains, versus Me, Austria and Lucca. Austria wanted to change the West Aussies' government type, and Lucca wanted nothing as we had a defensive pact and they were cool with this arrangement.

Then starts the stupidest loss I have experienced yet. The british never came. No massive naval invasions, no embargos, no puppets pooling troops into my lands... Nothing. Instead I took my 2 whole ships with 27 troops and invaded every holding they had in the Med-Sea, central and south america, and was starting an invasion of Ireland. All unopposed. Never lost a battle, and the British never moved on me. After they lost roughly 6 million pounds, I was crippling their colonies and starting to move closer to their home islands (compared to my 160k in expenses), and they had roughly ten times the losses (all attrition of course), my country suddenly surrendered...

Yeah. I had a similar experience when I was trying to form Ethiopia by war, where I would be conquering land and suddenly I'd "lose" and half my tribal lands would change sides and I'd be forced under a truce and have lost while I was winning. Now I come across this again, where the game suddenly says, while it is LOSING TO ME, that it has won. It conquered zero lands, no colonies, no allies, nothing. Never won a single battle. Never touched its war-objective, and yet, while losing holdings all over the world and watching North Africans land unopposed in Ireland my country suddenly decides they have beaten me and just gives away its lands.

All I wanted was a white peace. I never agreed to anything else, and the game seems happy to do this every once and awhile with ZERO reasons given as to why.

I think it is time I set this game to the side until next year. Let them fix it up, possible drop a few major patches to rework or makeover the entire system perhaps, but I just can't watch hours worth of work suddenly disappear because my game wants to act like a spoiled child and declare victory without ever winning a single thing.

[Zeromentor]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

Originally posted by Triangle:

But in this example Britain was also ignoring the war goal.

Then you gotta ask, why are they ignoring the war goal?

Britain is a big nation and market economy in the game. They face a lot of problems. Internally, economically, and with their puppets/dominions. They face several diplomatic plays and wars frequently. Odds are, they're busy being distracted by something else, or you're playing on the AI easy difficulty and they're just being absolutely incompetent because the AI algorithm favours protecting the player far too much which doesn't play out for a good dynamic experience.

I don't know why they ignored me during the war. As far as I knew, from start to forced finish they never involved themselves in any other diploplays, but merely never even attempted to defend themselves. Possibly a bug, or they were attempting to land troops on Austria and could never win the naval fight (before I was forced to surrender, the UK had won 0 battles on land or sea, and had lost roughly 30% of their direct holdings, and were about to lose Ireland, leaving them with just the British mainland).

I play on normal settings, nothing lowered, and usually on ironman (so random crashes don't set me back 2 years or so, but after this I'll probably just steer clear of that and just save scum, *no offense meant to people that play that way normally*)

As for not defending against naval invasions, that's pretty common from what I have seen, as long as their troops are mobilized and not garrisoned. Usually, I open multiple fronts to win wars through the use of naval invasions, and the AI rarely if ever use that option (I've seen it happen like three times in over 100 hours of play). Even worse, nations like the US, Qing and Japan are especially weak to naval invasions, as you have a few days of free land-grabbing before the AI can move troops to the front to stop you. If you claim a capitol during this short window you effectively win any war within a couple months. Provided they mobilize their troops and don't leave them garrisoned, of course.

[kgkong]

You can win wars without winning a single battle. You just have to have less attrition and exhaustion penalties suffered than the other side. (Less penalty from dead and injured soldiers)

Crank up your difficulty to High and Harsh for the AI. It makes a huge difference and actually nerf's a lot of people's complaints about the AI. I think they avoid the high and harsh settings because it seems to be worded a bit misleading and imply that the AI will discriminate the player over AI more, which is more or less not true. It just cranks the AI decision making up to being smarter and more meaningful and become less biased about the player. There's still some favoritism towards the player at normal difficulty. This goes out the window and you get treated like any other AI nation if you play on the highest settings.

[RandyNewman]

Admittedly I still don't fully get the war system, but it seems kind of dumb. You either have to take *one* war goal directly, or you have to naval invade their Capitols. Then you just wait to win everything. I've taken some outlandish spoils with very little effort that way

...but literally nothing else matters though LMAO. I had a similar war with France. Burned most of their colonies to the ground before invading the southern half of their country. They spent the next two decades in a civil war becauase I radicalized everyone and permanently ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up their market.

...Didn't matter, couldn't get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ war reparations out of them. I didn't do either of those two things (claiming *one* war goal or naval invading their Capitol). Instead, we gotta race against the clock to see who has the most war weariness. Thank God France was just a third party and we weren't after each other's states or something.

Now, I've seen the AI do split demands, where they pay for war reparations or something but the other country agrees to open its market. Maybe you can get out of a war like that, cuz it's extremely rare for them to concede or accept partial goals :/

[Oddible]

Hey guys, I've spent twice as much time in this game than in the majority of games I own and I just can't believe how crappy this game is - what a waste of money. I'm going to go spend $20 on a 2 hour movie bye. /s

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by Oddible:

Hey guys, I've spent twice as much time in this game than in the majority of games I own and I just can't believe how crappy this game is - what a waste of money. I'm going to go spend $20 on a 2 hour movie bye. /s

That sums it up.

[kgkong]

If we are gonna use the price for a bluray movie as a comparitive metric...
I paid full price for the game. Even if I take my top 3 favorite movies, 6.5 hours or so, 60 bucks... Maybe rewatched three or four times... 19.5-26 hours.

Yea, doesn't compare. Game more enjoyable for me.

So it's not even enough for one person to say "I didn't like the game don't buy it" to actually sway things when there's so many different experiences people have with the game. Different enjoyment. Just don't go into games with solid expectations about every minor detail of a game, especially when you don't develop games yourself. You don't know what goes into making the game, you don't know how to make a game, or else you'd probably be making the game you keep complaining this should've/could've been.

[DinoMight]

Originally posted by Dave Reckoning:

Originally posted by baldrick:

I sympathise with the OP and to just tell them to play another game is silly.

It's not silly at all - if he's not enjoying this game, play a different one. Surely the silly thing would be to continue to do something he doesn't enjoy?

it seems that you dont get it

[DinoMight]

i think the only thing for OP left is to play MP

which he (and i) cant
cause game is broken, bugged, unbalanced
and MP is desyncing all the time
its so bad, youtubers avoid making MP content because of it

such a disaster

[Doc Holliday]

You automatically capitulate when you reach -100 support/score. And you almost always continuously lose support because of attrition. So, like its really a race with a finite duration. The more attrition you take the faster you lose support, even more so if you have some of your territory captured by the enemy.

If you do not capture a war goal or the enemy capital, their support will never drop below 0. At that point, the only thing that will make them peace out is if their support for a treaty increases for other reasons, like due to turmoil in their states, or really high amounts of loans. I've made Britian peace out even without me capping any war goals or their mainland isles because GB ended up spending about $50 million on the war, their loans were ridiculously high, so they probably wanted to end the war before going bankrupt. Got them to release like 6 puppets and a nation.

[Dave Reckoning]

Originally posted by DinoMight:

Originally posted by Dave Reckoning:

It's not silly at all - if he's not enjoying this game, play a different one. Surely the silly thing would be to continue to do something he doesn't enjoy?

it seems that you dont get it

No, I "get it".

I just don't have the same agenda you do.

[Many-Named]

I think the reason why they had to make the war system the way it is, is because the engine just cant handle the intricate economic system and the separate units every paradox games has.

But yeah, MAJOR flaw in this game imo

[Rooter]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

If we are gonna use the price for a bluray movie as a comparitive metric...
I paid full price for the game. Even if I take my top 3 favorite movies, 6.5 hours or so, 60 bucks... Maybe rewatched three or four times... 19.5-26 hours.

Yea, doesn't compare. Game more enjoyable for me.

So it's not even enough for one person to say "I didn't like the game don't buy it" to actually sway things when there's so many different experiences people have with the game. Different enjoyment. Just don't go into games with solid expectations about every minor detail of a game, especially when you don't develop games yourself. You don't know what goes into making the game, you don't know how to make a game, or else you'd probably be making the game you keep complaining this should've/could've been.

Unless of course you were to compare against a streaming service.
Ie netflix $15/month, unlimited access, multiple viewers, choice of entertainment, entertains more than 1 person, etc then most games wouldnt be more cost effective.
Dont forget 2 or 3 $20 min a year entertainment updates for Paradox games.

And in all serious, have you never been disappointed in your life?
If you have ever been disappointed, did you praise the thing that disappointed you or did you criticise it?
Then imagine if someone you didnt know told you the personal reasons you were disappointed were wrong, and proceeded to assert all your criticism was also invalid?
Generally when someone is disappointed others avoid active opposition to their criticisms and quite often even offer commiserations publicly, even if they disagree.
Denying someone the right to criticise disappointment is extremely inflammatory, is it not?

Generally consumers are not artisans of the product they were buying, yet they have expectations that the vendor is required to satisfy?
Why would a butcher pay someone else to butcher?
Im not here to criticise what you write, but I can if I choose to.

[MP]

Originally posted by Rooter:

Ie netflix $15/month, unlimited access

OBJECTION!

Netflix is so heavily regionally locked I dumped it like a sack of steaming feces. Unlimited access my behind. Can't even share with family, smh

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

what bothers me the most is my current play where i sway countries , they sway , instantly after swaying they back down and damage my relations despite deal "is green thumb" happened with 3 countries in row

not to say enemy always wins battle despite i got numerous forces , he has minor tech advantage but battle system is just bonkers , i got like 200 army , he has 80 , when battle happens he always has "number advantage"

i also had general 2 or 3 times "unasign himself from front"

[Rooter]

Originally posted by MP:

Originally posted by Rooter:

Ie netflix $15/month, unlimited access

OBJECTION!

Netflix is so heavily regionally locked I dumped it like a sack of steaming feces. Unlimited access my behind. Can't even share with family, smh

Up to 4 of us can watch at any time in my house.
Fibre to the house, 4k all round.