Europa Universalis IV Catch-All

jrralls wrote:

Given that it took a year to make this expansion, does anyone else think this might be the final one?

I believe development is being handed off to a new Paradox Studio in Spain headed up by Johan. So, more expansions are planned.

robc wrote:
jrralls wrote:

Given that it took a year to make this expansion, does anyone else think this might be the final one?

I believe development is being handed off to a new Paradox Studio in Spain headed up by Johan. So, more expansions are planned.

Maybe one?

It’s a seven-year-old game that just got its first expansion in over a year. Generally speaking, seven years is the maximum amount of time paradox goes between its games. Seven years is the maximum that separates in EU game from its previous installment, a crusader kings from its previous installment, a hearts of iron game from its previous installment.

But! It has ben 10 years since the last Victoria game. Personally I think paradox has abandoned that series though so I don’t think it should count.

It's a shame there's not been a Viccy 3. Some of the mechanics were opaque, but you could bumble along quite happily doing whatever you liked - I had a completed game as Argentina where I had no wars at all, and just spent all my time building South America's most fabulous infrastructure and railway system.

Paradox has not abandoned Victoria and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I think it is a mistake to take past performance to predict future performance. Paradox is constantly changing in very many ways. Each of their properties is handled differently. CK2 got pushed as far (some might say farther) as it could be, so we get a CK3 with brand new tech. EU4, they decided to do a major re-vamp, so it took a lot longer than usual to get a DLC out. Have they pushed the EU4 codebase as far as they can like they did for CK2? I have no idea.

I would be surprised if they are looking more than 1-2 DLCs ahead for any of their games. Pdox has never felt like a company with a "master plan", where a property gets X DLCs or Y amount of time before incrementing the version number.

Personally, I would be surprised if they have another DLC left in EU4 but, on the other hand, I would not be shocked either.

Michael wrote:

Paradox has not abandoned Victoria and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

EUIV is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth to me, like CK2 a few years ago. It's still fun but things are a bit more fiddly and I'm starting to find carrying out what I want to do in some games to feel a bit like work.

I am sure paradox can squeeze a couple more out. They love to take my money.

What's the verdict on Emperor? The Steam reviews are "Mixed" but I feel like anything Paradox puts out gets review bombed by self-loathing Paradox fans.

Bumpity bump...

20th Anniversary of Europa Universalis, which means lots of EU stuff at deep discount on Steam this week. Emperor DLC is on sale at an all-time low of $9.99. I just picked it up.

Reading through some of the reviews, it seems as if they've fixed some of the complaints that came out with the update and release of Emperor.

I feel like they've fixed some of the complaints that came out with the update and release of is the company motto of Paradox. With a heavy emphasis on some.

Leviathan, the new EU4 DLC, is getting slammed in reviews. 78% negative reviews at the moment.

Sounds like it's unfinished, with programmer art still in places, bugs, and balancing issues galore.

Ouch! Glad I don't pre-purchase stuff any more. I thought about getting this this past weekend, happy I decided not to.

Yeah, me too. From the sounds of it, you should revert to the previous version and pretend this didn’t happen.

This was produced in their new studio in Spain and it sounds like they haven’t figured out the work flow yet. Baffling how it got released in its current state because it legitimately sounds broken.

I’m hopeful they can sort things out with some patches over the next few months.

Reminds me of the Olde Paradox Dayes of ought-seven.

Their last EU4 DLC did not go well either, from what I remember reading. Although by the time I picked it up, it had been patched up; I did not notice any issues in my playthrough with it. "Emperor" I think it was.

tboon wrote:

Reminds me of the Olde Paradox Dayes of ought-seven.

Their last EU4 DLC did not go well either, from what I remember reading. Although by the time I picked it up, it had been patched up; I did not notice any issues in my playthrough with it. "Emperor" I think it was.

Yes, Emperor was a fumble for sure, that eventually got mostly sorted out. This sounds like a whole new level of busted, though.

I used to buy all my Paradox games on GamerSGate when Pdox owned them because they would get patches way before other stores. Because everything they did was always released busted in those days.

When CK2 came out, it pretty much worked from the drop. Which was super surprising. Since then they have been pretty good until the last year or so. Now we are back where we started.

There is a deep lesson here to be learned, somewhere.

I don't know, though. I thought CK3 was a strong release, and the Marius update to Imperator was solid as well.

I've pretty much waited on their DLC because of lessons learned early on.

This will be interesting to see if/how they pick up the pieces. The DLC is down to 15% favorable on Steam now. I'm not sure I've ever seen a release from an established developer that low.

EDIT: Hahaha. The DLC's second most popular tag is ''Psychological Horror"

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mVGLgLl.jpg)

Haha, that is great! Feel bad for people that bought it though.

Ck3 release was good. Marius was good but it was a patch on a badly botched Imperator release. Stellaris release was rocky and has not quite lived up to its promise, even yet.

Crap. Now I am worried that the new game they announce in May will be Vicky 3 and will be bad too.

tboon wrote:

Haha, that is great! Feel bad for people that bought it though.

Ck3 release was good. Marius was good but it was a patch on a badly botched Imperator release. Stellaris release was rocky and has not quite lived up to its promise, even yet.

Crap. Now I am worried that the new game they announce in May will be Vicky 3 and will be bad too. :(

Oh, Vicky 3 would be AWESOME. I have confidence that in general Paradox eventually gets things to a point where I can play and have a lot of fun with their games.

On a positive note, patch 1.31 is out already.

On a negative note, the Leviathan DLC is the lowest rated game in ... the entire Steam catalog. Down to 11% favorable.

In less unhappy stuff, there's a really interesting blog post about the way EU4 treats it's history.

Collections: Teaching Paradox, Europa Univeralis IV, Part I: State of Play

I was really jonesing for an EU4 fix, it's been over a year. I don't have Emporer or the new Leviathan. However, it seems that neither got good reviews and the latter in particular has been excoriated. Is my game broken now? Have they fixed either to point that I should pick them up? Is the main game blown up by the free parts of the update? What's the state? I love this game, and want to play, but not to go into a hellscape.

I've dipped back into EU4 (listening to an Audiobook on the Hapsburgs will do that to you) and it's running stable for me and the UI mods I use to make it playable all seem to work. I don't have the Leviathan DLC though.

I'm in a place where I was with Crusader Kings 2 years ago where I'm more than ready for an EU5 though. It's gotten a bit unwieldy to play and some of the design decisions need to be refined, or scrapped, or something new starting. It's all starting to get a bit tedious to play, which was where I was in CK2 in the expansions after Way of Life.

I was playing a Bohemia game and the number of Vassalization/Personal Union casus belli you can get from the mission tree is ridiculous. I ended up with a PU with Burgundy (though being the HRE and having an event fire), PUs with Poland & Lithuania and Hungary through the mission tree, and vassalization of Brandenburg and Saxony through the mission tree as well.

I've noticed with nations further west in Europe that you can get big really, really quickly through the mission tree and then you're in the tedium of managing a massive empire.

It's still a good game, and again it's very playable since they patched up the post-Leviathan disaster, but it's started to get a bit creaky. I think you'll have a good time Greatajax

Leviathan was on sale on steam (wish lists for the win) and since it’s nicely patched. God it’s nice going back to this game, like putting on old shoes. Little Brown isn’t sleeping so it’s awesome to play and my brain is mostly on autopilot. Very relaxing.

Doing an Austrian run, first since near launch (when I formed HRE as a country, I also got the achievement for disbanding the HRE, because of a bug at the time). The mission tree is now extensive and has lots to do. It’s 1510, I have pu over Hungry, Bohemia and Poland. Having loads of fun stomping on the reformation. Only two centres of reformation remain. One (reformed) in my land that I can’t convert away yet and one (protestant) in Milan but Milan is staying Catholic and I can’t afford the AE to take it.

Haven’t really see many of the new features. The HRE decisions are nice but they feel sort of random. I don’t know why the Pope wanted to join the HRE but I was happy to let him. I don’t currently have the cash to do anything with the monuments (seem like a late game thing).

In what might be of some interest to EU4 players, In Our Time just put out an episode about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Everything I know about it comes from EU4, so I'll have to give it a listen this weekend.

DoveBrown wrote:

Leviathan was on sale on steam (wish lists for the win) and since it’s nicely patched. God it’s nice going back to this game, like putting on old shoes. Little Brown isn’t sleeping so it’s awesome to play and my brain is mostly on autopilot. Very relaxing.

Doing an Austrian run, first since near launch (when I formed HRE as a country, I also got the achievement for disbanding the HRE, because of a bug at the time). The mission tree is now extensive and has lots to do. It’s 1510, I have pu over Hungry, Bohemia and Poland. Having loads of fun stomping on the reformation. Only two centres of reformation remain. One (reformed) in my land that I can’t convert away yet and one (protestant) in Milan but Milan is staying Catholic and I can’t afford the AE to take it.

Haven’t really see many of the new features. The HRE decisions are nice but they feel sort of random. I don’t know why the Pope wanted to join the HRE but I was happy to let him. I don’t currently have the cash to do anything with the monuments (seem like a late game thing).

Oh hey, I just finished an Austria game myself, though I haven't purchased Leviathon. Got extremely lucky when fighting a succession war against a minnow who inherited Russia led to me getting a Personal Union with Russia. A more skilled player than me probably could have done a world conquest.

In my Byzantine run I have dissolved the HRE almost by accident. I was allied to Catholic Austria when the league war fired but for some reason Austria wouldn’t call me in. After the Protestants won, I have started to expand into HRE Italy (Shadow Kingdom had Italian princes stay). The non-Austrian Emperors aren’t particularly strong, so I have been beating up HRE electors and turning them Orthodox (they always chose OPMs and they are always Protestant). If I can I force the Emperor Othrodox at which point he ceases to be Emperor, if not I force him to release nations so next time he will be. In the end the last Protestant nation valid to be Emporer was Sweden and their king was 6 so the HRE dissolved. Very satisfying.