Europa Universalis IV announced

[Zanza]

As long as you don't play MP or want to do a WC, you can just play along. Follow the mission tree for some guidance and extra bonuses, get some idea groups and government reforms that feel right for your country. The AI is more challenging than in other Paradox games, but you should still be able to achieve your goals.

[Tamas]

I should return to this. Last time I played I felt like I was missing something obvious regarding how to make my armies not melt away in battle, which was a bit annoying but otherwise yes I think Paradox games are always best before you figure out how to minmax.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I still boot up EU4 regularly. It has many faults, but most are not really that detrimental to fun. It has a lot of sub-communities who play in different ways. IMO if you obsess with doing a WC every run, absolutely stacking all the ways to break game balance and min/max, it gets tedious/stale. I kinda just try to play a "competent/strong" game but without doing things that feel like I'm crazy gaming the systems, and I usually start a game with pretty moderate goals. Like the recent DLC I decided to try and complete Lübeck's mission trees etc.

Much as I like EU4, when/if EU5 is made I somewhat hope they focus a bit more on the "core" gameplay loop and not creating so many cumbersome systems. I don't necessarily mind them as they are now, but a lot of them if you really think about it could be abstracted away without really hurting game play, and would make things less micromanagey.

[Zanza]

This thread motivated me to continue my game from before Victoria was launched. Playing with Burgundy,trying to form Lotharingia eventually. I broke France with the help of Austria.

Like the recent DLC I decided to try and complete Lübeck's mission trees etc.

Did that as well. Was a fun campaign.

[OttoVonBismarck]

That's actually hilariously coincidental--I have a Burgundy game I have running that I intended to form Lotharingia, been in my saves for 4-5 months because I gave it up for a while. I think I had hit an impasse where some really nasty wars were going to be require to proceed and shelved it.

[Solmyr]

The mission trees, especially the ones from the newer DLCs, are definitely good for giving you goals in the game.

[FunkMonk]

I checked out some of the mission trees for the popular fantasy mod Anbennar and welp 

[Zanza]

With Burgundy, I joined the HRE as part of the succession crisis. That reduces you to Duchy, which created significant issues with government capacity. Maybe I should have gone for the more aggressive approach and just conquered everything? 

[Solmyr]

Yeah, don't join the HRE if you are already a kingdom or an empire, unless you can quickly become Emperor yourself.

[Zanza]

Last three dev diaries were on Ottomans, China and Japan, adding a lot of flavor in form of mission tree updates, events and country-specific mechanics for these countries. Looks very good. I hope they add more for e.g. Mameluks/Arabia and Persia/Timurids.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ottomans definitely needed an update, since they hadn't really been updated in ages they had gotten fairly lackluster compared to many other nations in terms of feature set.

[Syt]

 

[Solmyr]

According to the devs, next week's diary will be about updates for Russia.

[Zanza]

Russia's content looks dated compared to the never stuff, so adding more flavor makes sense.

[Zanza]

The scope of this suggests that it will be the final DLC for the game and that's why the revisit each of the majors one more time.

If they do an EU5 after this, I hope they more or less keep diplomacy and warfare, but rework exploration, colonization and trade. Let's see.