Europa Universalis IV

faille

faille

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khorum said:
Pretty hype for the Dharma expac, since I enjoy playing as Timurids/Mughal/Central Asians:


But my son got hooked on this game and he'd been playing on my account for a while. I told him to get his own copy and he showed me why he never did: the cheapest steam package with all the DLC's is fucking $250?!?!?

Even if you just bought the $80 bundle and only bought the big gameplay-changing DLCs (instead of the music/art packs) it still comes out to about $180 bucks. Holy shit I knew Paradox took this "hobby-grade" model seriously, I never realized they've literally priced themselves around it. That's like Games Workshop "hobby-grade".
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It is a little scary when you lay it out like that but don't forget that it was first released in 2013!
5 years of game play is pretty decent value, and the DLC do a decent job of refreshing the gameplay and prompting me to play it more. I'm up to 2358 hours, which probably makes it the best entertainment hours / dollars spent of anything by a massive margin.

And they have so many sales. for the longest time I would just play a DLC behind. Whenever a new DLC comes out, I'd buy the previous one because it was 50% - 75% off.
 
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khorum

khorum

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Well yeah, I don't think anyone who plays EU4 today would have any complaints tbh.... was just surprising how they kept the prices up. It's literally a barrier to new players, which means they've practically given up on new players and have decided to retain the value of all the content so that they don't have release NEW dlc's at a discount.

Anyways, kid bought the $80 bundle, Third Rome and Rule Brittania...seems to be fine.
 
A

a_skeleton_05

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khorum said:
Well yeah, I don't think anyone who plays EU4 today would have any complaints tbh.... was just surprising how they kept the prices up. It's literally a barrier to new players, which means they've practically given up on new players and have decided to retain the value of all the content so that they don't have release NEW dlc's at a discount.

Anyways, kid bought the $80 bundle, Third Rome and Rule Brittania...seems to be fine.
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It's not just a barrier to new players. I stopped playing around Art of War, and buying a dozen DLC to get back into the series now is just not conceivable for me. So, I pull out the good old pirate galleon and give that a go, only to realize that I'm so damn lost as to how the game now works that it's overwhelming, and I'm not willing to spend another 200 hours relearning it. A new DLC would almost be out by the time I did anyway.

It's a great system for the diehards though for sure.
 
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Aaron

Aaron

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In general I like their stratagey. I mean, the alternative would be for them to push out a *new* game every couple of years or so (EUV, EUVI...) But one of their main problems is that when they do release a new game, it feels a bit "empty". A few DLCs later and it's gotten more fleshed out. Probably around DLC 5 or 6 is the sweet spot, after that, it just feels bloated. The game becomes a bit too complex and you feel they need to do some culling. I think CK should be at 3 now, and EU at 5. That would make a good balance.
 
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khorum

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Dom said:
It's not just a barrier to new players. I stopped playing around Art of War, and buying a dozen DLC to get back into the series now is just not conceivable for me. So, I pull out the good old pirate galleon and give that a go, only to realize that I'm so damn lost as to how the game now works that it's overwhelming, and I'm not willing to spend another 200 hours relearning it. A new DLC would almost be out by the time I did anyway.

It's a great system for the diehards though for sure.
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It's not that bad really. Plus it's gotten a LOT easier after the last couple DLC's.

Most guides say jump into Castille or the Ottomans to learn how to play the game but I think if you just wanted a refresher on key concepts like how Diplomatic/Admin/Military power are the main levers in the game and how it's all about balancing land development versus technology--I'd suggest just start a throwaway game as a tiny isolated island nation in Asia with scarce resources and few neighbors (Ryukyu or one of the Philippine rajas).

Ryukyu is notoriously hard (there's an achievement for them conquering the world tho lol) but play a few decades and you'll remember how everything is supposed to work.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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khorum said:
It's not that bad really. Plus it's gotten a LOT easier after the last couple DLC's.

Most guides say jump into Castille or the Ottomans to learn how to play the game but I think if you just wanted a refresher on key concepts like how Diplomatic/Admin/Military power are the main levers in the game and how it's all about balancing land development versus technology--I'd suggest just start a throwaway game as a tiny isolated island nation in Asia with scarce resources and few neighbors (Ryukyu or one of the Philippine rajas).

Ryukyu is notoriously hard (there's an achievement for them conquering the world tho lol) but play a few decades and you'll remember how everything is supposed to work.
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It's good advice, but I'm personally no longer looking to get back into the game. My last attempt was working out fine (albeit slow) until I realized there really wasn't anything in the game I wanted to work towards that I hadn't already previously. I already did all the map painting and nation forming that I wanted to. I mean, I put close to a thousand hours into the game within the first year or so, and that wasn't long after doing the same with EU3. I'll probably wait until EU5 is on the horizon to go back to it where I can just absorb all of the DLC at once, and my interest is refreshed.
 
khorum

khorum

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EU5 is way waaaay over the horizon. The next big clausewitz game is Imperator, which looks like the next Victoria game set in the Roman setting, IE: pop management and deep commodities trading.

I fucking loooove Victoria, but it's their weakest seller, so here's hoping adapting Victoria's socioeconomic sim sells better as a Rome game.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Yeah, I could go for some more Vicky goodness. I never really understood how most of its systems worked, but it always felt that it was a more immersive game style.
 
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Aaron

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Vicky is the type of game that would benefit most from some more transparency (in tool tips etc) on how shit works, as well as a general interface overhaul. The core concepts are great. I'd pre-order Vicy 3 no worries.
 
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Aaron

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You know, I was thinking. They would solve a lot of problems with the expense of EU4 DLCs if they would just adopt a "Blizzard" type approach, sell the new expansion for $20, the last one for $10, and lump all the older together in one ~$20-30 bundle. Whenever a new expansion hits, that one goes for $20 and the others "move down the line" so to say.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Aaron said:
You know, I was thinking. They would solve a lot of problems with the expense of EU4 DLCs if they would just adopt a "Blizzard" type approach, sell the new expansion for $20, the last one for $10, and lump all the older together in one ~$20-30 bundle. Whenever a new expansion hits, that one goes for $20 and the others "move down the line" so to say.
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Not sure if that would work. It works well for WoW as the money you spend on each expansion allows you to play it while it's active (much of it becomes irrelevant/useless after it's done) whereas with EU4, the content remains (barring patches messing with features) untouched and still worth the same as when it was released. I could see them doing it for all but a certain number of the most recent DLC (4 or so) but not with each one.
 
Oblio

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I have not played this game in few years. I decided to buy all the expacs I did not have with the exception of Dharma. Based on what I have read Dharma sucks. Anyway, I feel like I am reliving my post from 4 years ago...I feel so dumb...which makes me love this game. Going to watch Arumba to relearn shit. Will report my progress after the Holiday Weekend.
 
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Arative

Arative

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Looks like a new dlc is coming.
Golden century.
Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century - Announcem…:
 
Araysar

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So how often do these DLCs go on sale?

Quarantine finally made me try to learn the mechanics of this game after giving it up on it several times over the last few years
 
Blazin

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Araysar said:
So how often do these DLCs go on sale?

Quarantine finally made me try to learn the mechanics of this game after giving it up on it several times over the last few years
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Fairly often on the paradox store, for quarantine it may be better to just pay the $4-5 and a subscription to get all of them. Just make sure you cancel it so it doesn't renew. 30 days to play with all DLC for the 1/2 the cost of just one of them.
 
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Araysar

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Put a dozen hours into it, I like it a lot but there's just so many mechanics.

I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it though but the trade and revenue generation still confuses me. I read some online explanations but they all talk about upstream and downstream nodes without explaining what it is so I have no fucking idea.

After 60 years of game play I'm still basically making the same 20 ducats per month
 
Onigen

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Araysar said:
Put a dozen hours into it, I like it a lot but there's just so many mechanics.

I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it though but the trade and revenue generation still confuses me. I read some online explanations but they all talk about upstream and downstream nodes without explaining what it is so I have no fucking idea.

After 60 years of game play I'm still basically making the same 20 ducats per month
Click to expand...
Kind of hard to get into it without knowing where you are on the map (which trade zone). The whole trade game is about pushing as much trade value as you can into your main trade hub where you collect the most % value.
 
Kaines

Kaines

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Araysar said:
Put a dozen hours into it, I like it a lot but there's just so many mechanics.

I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it though but the trade and revenue generation still confuses me. I read some online explanations but they all talk about upstream and downstream nodes without explaining what it is so I have no fucking idea.

After 60 years of game play I'm still basically making the same 20 ducats per month
Click to expand...
Upstream is trade nodes pushing trade toward your home node. Downstream are nodes your home node pushes trade toward. There a few termination nodes that have no downstream nodes. ( English Channel, Geneva, Venice)
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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Onigen said:
Kind of hard to get into it without knowing where you are on the map (which trade zone). The whole trade game is about pushing as much trade value as you can into your main trade hub where you collect the most % value.
Click to expand...


That helps a lot. I am in Sevilla hub btw playing as Castile and I have 2 merchants. One is collecting revenue in Sevilla I think and other is increasing trade power in one of the hubs in coastal africa.

I built churches, manufactories (or was it workshops? Whichever is the cheaper one) and marketplaces in top 3-4 provinces. Didnt bother building in all of them because after doing the math it looked like most of them would need 60-100 years just to break even.

Is there a way to raise tax rate? What should I build? How should I position my merchants? How should I use my fleets?
 
faille

faille

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Probably avoid collecting in your home hub since you get that automatically. better off allocating that merchant to transfer from one the hubs feeding into your home. ideally you create a chain of transfering merchants pushing trade along the route that ends in your home collecting hub, prioritising the nodes that have the most value and you have the most trade power in. you can use light ships to increase that even more.

tbh though, trade isn't huge for Castille. colonizing is their bread and butter and just tax by having heaps of regions
 
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